A life‐history spectrum of population responses to simultaneous change in climate and land use

Abstract

1. Climate and land use change are two of the primary threats to global biodiversity; however, each species within a community may respond differently to these facets of global change. Although it is typically assumed that species use the habitat that is advantageous for survival and reproduction, anthropogenic changes to the environment can create ecological traps, making it critical to assess both habitat selection (e.g. where species congregate on the landscape) and the influence of selected habitats on the demographic processes that govern population dynamics.2. We used a long-term , large-scale, multi-species dataset for waterfowl that spans the United States and Canada to estimate species-specific responses to climate and land use variables in a landscape that has undergone significant environmental change across space and time. We first estimated the effects of change in climate and land use variables on habitat selection and population dynamics for nine species. We then hypothesized that species-specific responses to environmental change would scale with life-history traits, specifically: longevity, nesting phenology and female breeding site fidelity.3. We observed species-level heterogeneity in the demographic and habitat selection responses to climate and land use change, which would complicate communitylevel habitat management. Our work highlights the importance of multi-species monitoring and community-level analysis, even among closely related species. 4. We detected several relationships between life-history traits, particularly nesting phenology, and species' responses to environmental change. One species, the early-nesting northern pintail (Anas acuta), was consistently at the extreme end of responses to land use and climate predictors and has been a species of conservation concern since their population began to decline in the 1980s. They, and the blue-winged teal, also demonstrated a positive habitat selection response to the proportion of cropland on the landscape that simultaneously reduced abundance the following year, indicative of susceptibility to ecological traps.

Delayed dichromatism in waterfowl as a convenient tool for assessing vital rates

“…This could partially violate the assumption that the male-like individuals were exclusively adult males, and thus potentially bias our estimates. Nevertheless, as the survival estimates are in the range of those reported for similar species (Buderman et al, 2023; Buxton et al, 2004; Krementz et al, 1997; Nichols et al, 1997), this assumption appears to be reliable. Nevertheless, the time window for the count surveys must be carefully chosen to take into account the time before the immature males start moulting.…”

“…As no estimates of adult survival were available in the literature (see Buderman et al, 2023), we were unable to properly assess the accuracy of the “apparent sex ratio” method for estimating this parameter. Nevertheless, there is evidence that the method is not highly biassed, as explained above.…”

Riding the wetland wave: Can ducks locate macroinvertebrate resources across the breeding season?

“…We checked for convergence visually using trace plots and evaluated Gelman‐Rubin statistics, ensuring all were ≤1.1 (Gelman & Rubin, 1992 ; Hobbs & Hooten, 2015 ). We provide posterior means and standard deviations, as well as the proportion of the posterior that was on the same side of 0 as the mean for each parameter, denoted as f (Buderman et al., 2023 ). We present 95% highest posterior density intervals (HPDI) in all applicable figures.…”