Earlier colony arrival but no trend in hatching timing in two congeneric seabirds ( Uriaspp.) across the North Atlantic
A global analysis recently showed that seabird breeding phenology (as the timing of egg-laying and hatching) does not, on average, respond to temperature changes or advance with time (Keogan et al. 2018 Nat. Clim. Change 8 , 313–318). This group, the most threatened of all birds, is therefore prone...
Published in: | Biology Letters |
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Main Authors: | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |
Other Authors: | , , , , , |
Format: | Article in Journal/Newspaper |
Language: | English |
Published: |
The Royal Society
2019
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Subjects: | |
Online Access: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2019.0634 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rsbl.2019.0634 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full-xml/10.1098/rsbl.2019.0634 |
Summary: | A global analysis recently showed that seabird breeding phenology (as the timing of egg-laying and hatching) does not, on average, respond to temperature changes or advance with time (Keogan et al. 2018 Nat. Clim. Change 8 , 313–318). This group, the most threatened of all birds, is therefore prone to spatio-temporal mismatches with their food resources. Yet, other aspects of the breeding phenology may also have a marked influence on breeding success, such as the arrival date of adults at the breeding site following winter migration. Here, we used a large tracking dataset of two congeneric seabirds breeding in 14 colonies across 18° latitudes, to show that arrival date at the colony was highly variable between colonies and species (ranging 80 days) and advanced 1.4 days/year while timing of egg-laying remained unchanged, resulting in an increasing pre-laying duration between 2009 and 2018. Thus, we demonstrate that potentially not all components of seabird breeding phenology are insensitive to changing environmental conditions. |
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