behavioural ecology of arctic sandpipers’ incubation strategies : constraints and consequences in a changing ecosystem

• Main Author: Meyer, Nicolas
• Other Authors: Laboratoire Chrono-environnement (UMR 6249) (LCE), Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Université de Franche-Comté (UFC), Université Bourgogne Franche-Comté COMUE (UBFC)-Université Bourgogne Franche-Comté COMUE (UBFC), Université Bourgogne Franche-Comté, Loïc Bollache, Olivier Gilg, Eve Afonso
• Format: Doctoral or Postdoctoral Thesis
• Language: French
• Published: HAL CCSD 2021
• Subjects: Arctic; Ground-Surface temperature; Predation; Incubation behaviour; Climate change; Productivity; Changement climatique; Comportement d’incubation; Productivité; Température au sol; Prédation; Arctique; [SDV.SA]Life Sciences [q-bio]/Agricultural sciences; Arctique*
• Online Access: https://theses.hal.science/tel-03346440; https://theses.hal.science/tel-03346440/document; https://theses.hal.science/tel-03346440/file/these_A_MEYER_Nicolas_2021.pdf

To help predict the effects of climate change on the biosphere, this work offers an original approach inspired from a behavioural ecology framework: studying parental care behaviour of sandpipers (genus Calidris), their constraints and their consequences on reproductive success. These long-distance migrants move to the Arctic, which currently experiences rapid changes, to breed during the short summer season. Under those latitudes, abiotic conditions as well as resource availability are highly variable and predation is the main cause of reproductive failure. Therefore, sandpipers’ reproductive success depends on adults’ ability to initiate reproduction and to provide their young with the care required for their survival and development. As sandpipers must forage, parental effort that enhances current reproductive success is traded-off against foraging that enhances adult’s survival. Adults’ behaviour hence results from the management of this steady trade off. Since incubation prevents the adult from foraging, sandpipers evolved two incubation strategies, defined as the partitioning of incubation duties between partners, which resolve this trade-off in different ways. The biparental strategy relies on the cooperation of both parents who take turns at the nest, while a single adult incubates in the uniparental strategy.The first chapter of my thesis aims at discussing the main evolutionary hypotheses formulated to explain the emergence of such a diversity of strategies in sandpipers and describes the incubation behaviour variability between strategies.The next two chapters rely on the monitoring of hundreds of nests (provide estimated laying date and nest fate as successful or predated) from a diversity of sandpiper species (from 7 to 9 species), which incubation behaviour was monitored using a standardized protocol (recording of nest temperature), at the circumpolar scale (12-15 study sites) and over several years (from 2016 to 2018 and from 2016 to 2019).The second chapter is devoted to the study of the ...