Data from: Sex-dependent phenological plasticity in an arctic hibernator

• Published in: Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics
• Main Authors: Williams, Cory T., Buck, C. Loren, Sheriff, Michael J., Richter, Melanie M., Krause, Jesse S., Barnes, Brian M.
• Language: unknown
• Published: 2017
• Subjects: Life sciences; medicine and health care; Arctic; Alaska
• Online Access: http://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:nl:ui:13-k8-3xw6; https://easy.dans.knaw.nl/ui/datasets/id/easy-dataset:98034

Hibernation provides a means of escaping the metabolic challenges associated with seasonality, yet the ability of mammals to prolong or re-enter seasonal dormancy in response to extreme weather events is unclear. Here, we show that arctic ground squirrels in northern Alaska exhibited sex-dependent plasticity in the physiology and phenology of hibernation in response to a series of late spring snowstorms in 2013 that resulted in the latest snow-melt on record. Females and non-reproductive males responded to the >1 month delay in snow-melt by extending heterothermy or re-entering hibernation after several days of euthermy, leading to a >2-week delay in reproduction compared to surrounding years. In contrast, reproductive males neither extended nor re-entered hibernation, likely because seasonal gonadal growth and development and subsequent testosterone release prevents a return to torpor. Our findings reveal intriguing differences in responses of males and females to climatic stressors which can generate a phenological mismatch between the sexes.