Demographic responses to climate change in a threatened Arctic species ...

• Main Authors: Dunham, Kylee D., Tucker, Anna M., Koons, David N., Abebe, Asheber, Dobson, F. Stephen, Grand, James B.
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: Dryad 2020
• Subjects: Arctic; Bering Sea; Climate change; Global warming; Alaska
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.4qrfj6q88; https://datadryad.org/stash/dataset/doi:10.5061/dryad.4qrfj6q88

The Arctic is undergoing rapid and accelerating change in response to global warming, altering biodiversity patterns and ecosystem function across the region. For Arctic endemic species, our understanding of the consequences of such change remains limited. Spectacled eiders (Somateria fischeri), a large Arctic sea duck, use remote regions in the Bering Sea, Arctic Russia, and Alaska throughout the annual cycle making it difficult to conduct comprehensive surveys or demographic studies. Listed as Threatened under the U.S. Endangered Species Act, understanding the species response to climate change is critical for effective conservation policy and planning. Here, we developed an integrated population model to describe spectacled eider population dynamics using capture-mark-recapture, breeding population survey, nest survey, and environmental data collected between 1992 and 2014. Our intent was to estimate abundance, population growth, and demographic rates, and quantify how changes in the environment ... : Data were collected through a number of different methods and collated here for analysis in an integrated population model. Field collection methods include aerial survey data (waterfowl breeding pair survey), nest plot survey, and capture-mark-recapture. Details on processing are available in the "read_me" sheet within the "spei_data" excel file and in the forthcoming manuscript. Additional files include ".RDS" for the capture-history and multi-state m-array based on capture-mark-recapture data. Two R files are included with the code to load the data, the jags model, and the code to fit the jags model. ...