Body shrinkage due to Arctic warming reduces red knot fitness in tropical wintering range

• Published in: Science
• Main Authors: van Gils, Jan A., Lisovski, Simeon, Lok, Tamar, Meissner, Włodzimierz, Ożarowska, Agnieszka, de Fouw, Jimmy, Rakhimberdiev, Eldar, Soloviev, Mikhail Y., Piersma, Theunis, Klaassen, Marcel
• Other Authors: NWO (Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research), BirdLife Netherlands, World Wildlife Fund-Netherlands, Australian Research Council
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) 2016
• Subjects: Arctic; Red Knot
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.aad6351; https://www.science.org/doi/pdf/10.1126/science.aad6351

Consequences conferred at a distance Migratory animals have adapted to life in multiple, sometimes very different environments. Thus, they may show particularly complex responses as climates rapidly change. Van Gils et al. show that body size in red knot birds has been decreasing as their Arctic breeding ground warms (see the Perspective by Wikelski and Tertitski). However, the real toll of this change appears not in the rapidly changing northern part of their range but in the apparently more stable tropical wintering range. The resulting smaller, short-billed birds have difficulty reaching their major food source, deeply buried mollusks, which decreases the survival of birds born during particularly warm years. Science , this issue p. 819 see also p. 775