Evidence of a shift in the cyclicity of Antarctic seabird dynamics linked to climate

• Main Authors: Barbraud, Christophe, Jenouvrier, Stéphanie, Weimerskirch, Henri, Park, Young-Hyang, Cazelles, Bernard
• Other Authors: Centre d'études biologiques de Chizé (CEBC), Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Fonctionnement et évolution des systèmes écologiques (FESE), École normale supérieure - Paris (ENS Paris), Université Paris sciences et lettres (PSL)-Université Paris sciences et lettres (PSL)-Université Pierre et Marie Curie - Paris 6 (UPMC)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Modélisation mathématique et informatique de systèmes complexes naturels, biologiques ou sociaux (GEODES)
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: HAL CCSD 2005
• Subjects: climate change; cyclic variability; regime shift; Antarctic marine predators; time-series analysis; [SDE.BE]Environmental Sciences/Biodiversity and Ecology; [SDE.ES]Environmental Sciences/Environmental and Society; [SDE.MCG]Environmental Sciences/Global Changes; Antarctic; The Antarctic; Fulmar; Antarc*; Sea ice; Snow Petrel
• Online Access: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00188213

International audience Ecosystems and populations are known to be influenced not only by long-term climatic trends, but also by other short-term climatic modes, such as interannual and decadal-scale variabilities. Because interactions between climatic forcing, biotic and abiotic components of ecosystems are subtle and complex, analysis of long-termseries of both biological and physical factors is essential to understanding these interactions. Here, we apply a wavelet analysis simultaneously to long-termdatasets on the environment and on the populations and breeding success of three Antarctic seabirds (southern fulmar, snow petrel, emperor penguin) breeding in Terre Ade´lie, to study the effects of climate fluctuations on Antarctic marine ecosystems. We show that over the past 40 years, populations and demographic parameters of the three species fluctuate with a periodicity of 3–5 years that was also detected in sea-ice extent and the Southern Oscillation Index. Although the major periodicity of these interannual fluctuations is not common to different species and environmental variables, their cyclic characteristics reveal a significant change since 1980. Moreover, sliding-correlation analysis highlighted the relationships between environmental variables and the demography of the three species, with important change of correlation occurring between the end of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s. These results suggest that a regime shift has probably occurred during this period, significantly affecting the Antarctic ecosystem, but with contrasted effects on the three species.