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Publication
Local-scale impacts of extreme events drive demographic asynchrony in neighbouring top predator populations
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Advisor(s)
Abstract(s)
Extreme weather events are among the most critical aspects of climate
change, but our understanding of their impacts on biological populations
remains limited. Here, we exploit the rare opportunity provided by the availability of concurrent longitudinal demographic data on two neighbouring
marine top predator populations (the black-browed albatross, Thalassarche
melanophris, breeding in two nearby colonies) hit by an exceptionally violent
storm during one study year. The aim of this study is to quantify the demographic impacts of extreme events on albatrosses and test the hypothesis that
extreme events would synchronously decrease survival rates of neighbouring populations. Using demographic modelling we found that, contrary to
our expectation, the storm affected the survival of albatrosses from only
one of the two colonies, more than doubling the annual mortality rate compared to the study average. Furthermore, the effects of storms on adult
survival would lead to substantial population declines (up to 2% per year)
under simulated scenarios of increased storm frequencies. We, therefore,
conclude that extreme events can result in very different local-scale impacts
on sympatric populations. Crucially, by driving demographic asynchrony,
extreme events can hamper our understanding of the demographic
responses of wild populations to mean, long-term shifts in climate.
Description
Keywords
Black-browed albatross Seabird Demography Extreme event Cimate Top predator
Citation
Ventura, F., Stanworth, A., Crofts, S., Kuepfer, A., & Catry, P. (2023). Local-scale impacts of extreme events drive demographic asynchrony in neighbouring top predator populations. Biology Letters, 19(2). https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2022.0408
Publisher
The Royal Society