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

• Main Authors: JA Van Gils, S Lisovski, T Lok, W Meissner, A Ozarowska, J De Fouw, E Rakhimberdiev, MY Soloviev, T Piersma, Marcel Klaassen
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: 2016
• Subjects: ADVANCEMENT; BERGMANNS RULE; CLIMATE-CHANGE; GROWTH; Multidisciplinary Sciences; PRESSURE; Science & Technology; Science & Technology - Other Topics; SEA-ICE; SHOREBIRDS; SIZE; Animal Migration; Animals; Arctic Regions; Beak; Bivalvia; Body Size; Breeding; Charadriiformes; Food Chain; Genetic Fitness; Global Warming; Malnutrition; Seasons; 050101 Ecological Impacts of Climate Change; 970105 Expanding Knowledge in the Environmental Sciences; Centre for Integrative Ecology; School of Life and Environmental Sciences; MD Multidisciplinary; 4102 Ecological applications; Arctic; Climate change; Global warming; Red Knot; Sea ice
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10536/DRO/DU:30084781; https://figshare.com/articles/journal_contribution/Body_shrinkage_due_to_Arctic_warming_reduces_red_knot_fitness_in_tropical_wintering_range/20882461

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