Climate change impacts on animal migration

Abstract

CommentaryThis is the first in a regular series of mini-review which highlight outstanding recently published papers that shed new light on biological responses to climate change. We chose migration as the topic for the first mini review because its global geographical scale makes migrating individuals particularly vulnerable to climate change, and at the same time, the process of migration has fundamental impacts on ecological processes and biodiversity.Movement is an integral part of the ecology of many animals, and it can affect individual fitness and population persistence by enabling foraging and predation, behavioural interactions, and migration [1]. Migration, in particular, affects biodiversity at regional and global scales, and migratory animals affect ecosystem processes. Animals use predictable environmental cues for the timing and navigation of migration. A change in these cues will affect the phenology and extent of migration. Arrival date and hatching date are phenological markers in migrating birds, for example, that can be strongly affected by global warming. These dynamics have been incorporated into a mathematical model recently [2]. Higher temperatures cause earlier appearance of the insect prey of hatchling birds, which exerts pressure on birds to breed earlier so that hatchling development coincides with peak prey abundance. Advanced breeding is dependent on the arrival time of the adults at the breeding site, as well as the delay between arrival and the start of breeding. These traits can change synchronously or asynchronously, and a mismatch between prey abundance and hatching can cause population declines. The mathematical model [2] explores the dynamics of these interactions and their evolutionary trajectories, and it can explain patterns observed in European flycatchers. Conversely, departure from their non-breeding grounds in Africa also appears to occur earlier for at least some Palearctic migratory birds [3]. Hence, there is a global shift in departure and arrival times that affects migratory bird movement and local abundance as a result of climate warming.Phenological shifts in migration of endothermic birds are linked to the abundance of their ectothermic prey. Although endotherms are also directly affected by changes in temperature, which affects their metabolic demands for thermoregulation, these direct effects are more pronounced in ectotherms. The body temperature and hence physiology of ectotherms such as invertebrates and fish is closely tied to environmental temperatures. Climate warming will therefore influence metabolism and other physiological processes directly in ectotherms, and this can have pronounced effects on movement and migration.The proximate mechanisms that enable movement are the physiological functions that provide energy to the muscles and the muscles themselves that transform chemical energy (ATP) to work. All physiological processes are influenced by temperature, to varying degrees and usually optimal physiological rates are achieved within a relatively na...

Elevational range shifts in four mountain ungulate species from the Swiss Alps

“…, Sunday et al. , Seebacher and Post ). Large herbivores with pronounced behavioral plasticity often move over long distances (Middleton et al.…”

“…In contrast to most plant and ectotherm animal species, linkages between climate change and range shifts in large endothermic mammals are often obscured by the high mobility and lack of long-term observational data for most species (Inouye et al 2000, Bolger et al 2008, Sunday et al 2012, Seebacher and Post 2015. Large herbivores with pronounced behavioral plasticity often move over long distances (Middleton et al 2013, Mysterud 2013, Mason et al 2014.…”

Genetic adaptation as a biological buffer against climate change: Potential and limitations

“…One of the biotic complexities that might strongly influence our predictions of how biota will respond to future climate change (Valladares et al 2014;Urban et al 2016) is the capacity of natural populations to genetically adapt to environmental change (Bradshaw & Holzapfel 2006;Márquez et al 2007;Gienapp et al 2008;Lavergne et al 2010;Hoffmann & Sgrò 2011;Merilä & Hendry 2014;Chirgwin et al 2015). Next to physiological acclimation, altered behavior, and adaptive phenotypic plasticity mediated by maternal effects and epigenetics (Fiedler et al 2004;Fuller et al 2010;Somero 2010;Huey et al 2012;Charmantier & Gienapp 2014;Bell et al 2015;Seebacher & Post 2015;Wong & Candolin 2015), evolutionary responses have the potential to provide a buffer against extinctions or range shifts upon climate change (Gienapp et al 2008;Hoffmann & Sgrò 2011;Merilä & Hendry 2014). The emerging insight is that plasticity may not be enough for populations to track ongoing climate change and that genetic changes are needed (Duputié et al 2015;Gunderson & Stillman 2015).…”

An efficient and inexpensive method for measuring long-term thermoregulatory behavior

“…For instance, many anthropogenic factors can alter the thermal environment posing threats to the performance of organisms. Global climate change is the most obvious (Deutsch et al, 2008; Seebacher and Post, 2015), but there are other examples as well. For instance, deforestation, or more generally the loss of shading caused by habitat destruction, can greatly increase the temperatures to which organisms are exposed (Gordon, 2003).…”

“…Moreover, infectious diseases, many of which are introduced or exacerbated by humans, often induce behavioral fevers (preference of warmer temperatures in response to pathogen exposure) in ectotherms (Blanford and Thomas, 1999) that can be important for resisting infections and reducing the adverse consequences on hosts (Pörtner, 2002; Raffel et al, 2006; Lafferty, 2009; Rohr and Raffel, 2010; Rohr et al, 2011a, 2013). Hence, determining the bounds of thermoregulatory abilities among ectothermic populations will be critical for predicting the impacts of widespread anthropogenic change (Addo-Bediako et al, 2000; Deutsch et al, 2008; Seebacher and Post, 2015). …”