Pre-laying climatic cues can time reproduction to optimally match offspring hatching and ice conditions in an Arctic marine bird |
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Authors: | Oliver P Love H Grant Gilchrist Sébastien Descamps Christina A D Semeniuk Joël Bêty |
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Institution: | 1. Department of Biological Sciences, University of Windsor, 401 Sunset Avenue, Windsor, ON, N9B 3P4, Canada 2. Département de Biologie and Centre d’études nordiques, Université du Québec à Rimouski, Rimouski, QC, Canada 3. National Wildlife Research Centre, Environment Canada, Ottawa, ON, Canada 4. Department of Biology, Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, Canada 5. Department of Geomatics Engineering, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada
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Abstract: | Individuals breeding in seasonal environments are under strong selection to time reproduction to match offspring demand and
the quality of the post-natal environment. Timing requires both the ability to accurately interpret the appropriate environmental
cues, and the flexibility to respond to inter-annual variation in these cues. Determining which cues are linked to reproductive
timing, what these cues are predicting and understanding the fitness consequences of variation in timing, is therefore of
paramount interest to evolutionary and applied ecologists, especially in the face of global climate change. We investigated
inter-annual relationships between climatic variation and the timing of reproduction in Canada’s largest breeding population
of Arctic common eiders (Somateria mollissima) in East Bay, Nunavut. Warmer spring temperatures predicted both earlier mean annual laying dates and the earlier ice-free
conditions required by ducklings for post-natal growth. Warmer springs had higher variation in this temperature cue, and the
population laying distribution became increasingly positively-skewed in warmer summers, potentially indicating that more low-quality
females had the opportunity to commence laying in warmer years. Females that timed laying to match duckling hatching just
prior to fully ice-free conditions obtained the highest duckling survival probability. Inter-annual data on repeated breeding
attempts revealed that the individuals examined show a similar degree of laying flexibility in response to climatic variation;
however, there was significant individual variation in the absolute timing of laying within an average year. This work sheds
light on how reproductive timing is related to and influenced by variation in local climate and provides vital information
on how climate-related variation in reproductive timing influence a fitness measure in an Arctic species. Results are especially
relevant to future work in polar environments given that global climatic changes are predicted to be most intense at high
latitudes. |
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