An observational analysis of Canada jay foraging and caching ecology in Denali National Park and Preserve
Arctic and subarctic wildlife are among the most vulnerable species to climate change. Canada jays (Perisoreus canadensis (Linnaeus 1776)) are generalist residents of northern boreal forests and scatter-hoard food to insulate against food scarcity during winter. Unlike most scatter-hoarders, however...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Article in Journal/Newspaper |
| Language: | unknown |
| Published: |
University of Toronto
2021
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/1807/109810 http://www.nrcresearchpress.com/doi/abs/10.1139/cjz-2021-0053 |
| Summary: | Arctic and subarctic wildlife are among the most vulnerable species to climate change. Canada jays (Perisoreus canadensis (Linnaeus 1776)) are generalist residents of northern boreal forests and scatter-hoard food to insulate against food scarcity during winter. Unlike most scatter-hoarders, however, Canada jays primarily cache perishable food, rendering their caches more susceptible to climate-change induced degradation and loss. Here we use a mostly non-invasive approach to document Canada jay foraging ecology among a population in interior Alaska, including the types of food acquired, foraging and caching rates, and cache longevity and loss. We also tested for associations between foraging and caching rates with reproductive metrics to assess possible relationships among food and productivity. We found that Canada jays have a varied diet that changed seasonally, and responded to a record-setting warm spring by directing foraging efforts away from cache recovery and towards the emergence of fresh food. We did not find evidence for relationships between foraging and caching rate with reproductive output, possibly owing to small sample sizes. We found that caches were recovered quickly ( The accepted manuscript in pdf format is listed with the files at the bottom of this page. The presentation of the authors' names and (or) special characters in the title of the manuscript may differ slightly between what is listed on this page and what is listed in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript; that in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript is what was submitted by the author. |
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