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

• Main Authors: van Gils, Jan A., Lisovski, Simeon, Lok, Tamar, Meissner, Włodzimierz, Ożarowska, Agnieszka, de Fouw, Jimmy, Rakhiemberdiev, Eldar, Soloviev, Mikhail Y., Piersma, Theunis, Klaassen, Marcel
• Format: Dataset
• Language: unknown
• Published: Data Archiving and Networked Services (DANS) 2017
• Subjects: Life sciences; medicine and health care; body shrinkage; climate change; bird migration; Arctic amplification; microevolution; trophic mismatch; Taimyr Peninsula; Gdańsk Bay; Banc d'Arguin; Calidris canutus; Loripes lucinalis; Dosinia isocardia; Zostera noltii; psy; envir; Arctic; Climate change; Red Knot; Taimyr
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.n1m8d

Reductions in body size are increasingly being identified as a response to climate warming. Here we present evidence for a case of such body shrinkage, potentially due to malnutrition in early life. We show that an avian long-distance migrant (red knot, Calidris canutus canutus), which is experiencing globally unrivaled warming rates at its high-Arctic breeding grounds, produces smaller offspring with shorter bills during summers with early snowmelt. This has consequences half a world away at their tropical wintering grounds, where shorter-billed individuals have reduced survival rates. This is associated with these molluscivores eating fewer deeply buried bivalve prey and more shallowly buried seagrass rhizomes. We suggest that seasonal migrants can experience reduced fitness at one end of their range as a result of a changing climate at the other end. vanGils_Fig2_Arctic_climateThis file contains annual data on high-Arctic climate data (also presented in Table S1).vanGils_Fig2_Polish_biometryThis file contains the biometry measured on juvenile red knots caught in Gdańsk Bay.vanGils_Fig3A_Mauritania_stable_isotopesThis file contains the stable isotope data on 676 juvenile and 1664 adult red knots at their wintering site Banc d'Arguin (Mauritania).vanGils_Fig3B_Mauritania_prey_depthThis file contains the prey depth distributions estimated for the three food types in Mauritania.vanGils_Fig4_resighting_historyThis file contains the resighting history of 690 juvenile and 1691 adult red knot caught in Mauritania.breeding groundspolygon of the breeding grounds of red knots at Taymir Peninsulaarea.longlat.RDataData manipulation high-Arctic climateThis R script handles the data on high-Arctic climate with respect to temperature, NDVI and snow.DataManipulation.R