Climate Driven Life Histories: The Case of the Mediterranean Storm Petrel

Abstract

Seabirds are affected by changes in the marine ecosystem. The influence of climatic factors on marine food webs can be reflected in long-term seabird population changes. We modelled the survival and recruitment of the Mediterranean storm petrel (Hydrobates pelagicus melitensis) using a 21-year mark-recapture dataset involving almost 5000 birds. We demonstrated a strong influence of prebreeding climatic conditions on recruitment age and of rainfall and breeding period conditions on juvenile survival. The results suggest that the juvenile survival rate of the Mediterranean subspecies may not be negatively affected by the predicted features of climate change, i.e., warmer summers and lower rainfall. Based on considerations of winter conditions in different parts of the Mediterranean, we were able to draw inferences about the wintering areas of the species for the first time.

Forecasting ocean warming impacts on seabird demography: a case study on the European storm petrel

“…Most of the known colonies of this subspecies (Mante & Debize 2012) are located close to continental slopes, with larger colonies closer (5-6 km for Marettimo, the colony investigated in this study, and Filfla, the other major colony known for the species) than smaller colonies (found at a distance of between 20 and 40 km), and all are in areas where up-welling occurs (Agostini & Bakun 2002, Massetti 2004. Wintering storm petrels are thought to move to the Alboran Sea (Soldatini et al 2014), a particularly nutrientrich area that benefits from currents inflowing from the Atlantic Ocean (Agostini & Bakun 2002, Reul et al 2005, Renault et al 2012. This is a first attempt at a deeper analysis of the demography of the Mediterranean storm petrel, considering population growth as a function of oceanographic conditions (Van Houtan & Halley 2011).…”

“…Breeding performance in particular may be affected directly by sea surface temperature (SST) by changing the distribution and/or abundance of important prey species (Frederiksen et al 2007), or indirectly via effects on prey recruitment (Hedd et al 2006). Furthermore, unfavourable climate conditions may induce seabirds to skip breeding (Jenouvrier et al 2005a, Olivier et al 2005, Cubaynes et al 2011 or affect nest-site conditions (Chambers et al 2011, Moreno & Møller 2011, Soldatini et al 2014). …”

“…These changes could positively affect nesting seabirds by allowing higher fledging survival (Soldatini et al 2014). On the other hand, a generalized rise in temperature could affect the entire marine food web, with unpredictable consequences for seabird population trends (Paleczny et al 2015).…”

“…Pre-breeding climatic conditions strongly affect recruitment age (Soldatini et al 2014). Here we extend this research by investigating oceanographic effects on skipping propensity, with the expectation that this phenemenon is more frequent in unfavourable environmental conditions (Cubaynes et al 2011).…”

Seabirds and climate: knowledge, pitfalls, and opportunities

“…The use of different spatial scales is not clearly justified in all studies (e.g., Soldatini et al, 2014) and an understanding of the spatial use of marine habitat made by each species in each period of the life cycle is essential to test appropriate hypotheses on the effect of climate on seabird ecology (Frederiksen et al, 2004a;Scott et al, 2006). To that end, the improvement of technology in recent decades (e.g., Burger and Shaffer, 2008;Wakefield et al, 2009) has allowed researchers to increase their knowledge about migration routes (e.g., Guilford et al, 2009;Egevang et al, 2010), wintering areas (González-Solís et al, 2007;Frederiksen et al, 2012) and foraging areas also during reproduction (Gremillet et al, 2004;Guilford et al, 2008) and apply oceanographic indices at more appropriate temporal and spatial scales (Duffy, 1993;Weimerskirch et al, 2012).…”