Invasive rats and seabirds after 2,000 years of an unwanted coexistence on Mediterranean islands

Ruffino, Lise; Bourgeois, Karen; Vidal, Éric; Duhem, Céline; Paracuellos, Mariano; Escribano, F.; Sposimo, Paolo; Baccetti, Nicola; Pascal, Michel; Oro, Daniel

doi:10.1007/s10530-008-9394-z

Cited by 75 publications

(71 citation statements)

References 52 publications

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“…However, we need to collect the foundational information regarding links between demographics and climate, and the mechanisms that link them as we must have robust estimates of vital rates to build predictive models, and this constitutes a big challenge. In general, there is more potential to manage the impacts of other global change agents such as overharvesting (Jahncke et al, 2004;Becker and Beissinger, 2006), bycatch in fisheries (Bunce et al, 2002;Barbraud et al, 2008;Rolland et al, 2008;Ramos et al, 2012), habitat deterioration (Lindenmayer and Fischer, 2013), pollution (Croxall et al, 2012) or invasive species (Nogales et al, 2004;Ruffino et al, 2009;Major et al, 2013) than there is for managing climate (Rogelj et al, 2013), so this can be an indirect way of battling the impacts of climate warming.…”

Section: Predicting the Future Impacts Of Climate On Seabirdsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Seabirds and climate: knowledge, pitfalls, and opportunities

Oró

2014

Front. Ecol. Evol.

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As a physical driver of ecosystem functioning, it is not surprising that climate influences seabird demography and population dynamics, generally by affecting food availability. However, if we zoom in ecologically, seabirds are in fact very heterogeneous, ranging in size from very small to very large species (with a difference of more than two orders of magnitude in body weight), from planktivorous forms to predators of large fish and squid, from benthic to pelagic, from species with small foraging ranges to species feeding throughout the whole circumpolar region, and from resident species (at a spatial mesoscale) to trans-equatorial migrating seabirds that travel large distances across several oceanographic systems. Due to this high variability and the difficulty in obtaining direct reliable estimates of long-term food availability, global climatic indices have been extensively used in studying seabird demography and population dynamics. However, the use made by researchers of these indices has certain conceptual and methodological pitfalls, which I shall address in this review. Other factors, such as anthropogenic impacts (including oil-spills and interaction with fisheries), may further alter or confound the association between climate and seabird demography. These pitfalls and environmental noise, together with the inability to incorporate resilience, may bias our predictions regarding the future impact of global warming on seabirds, many of which have vulnerable populations.Keywords: predictive models, resilience, methodological bias, evolution, global change, climate, seabirds HISTORICAL BACKGROUNDA search performed in June 2014 using the words "climate & seabird" in the ISI Web of Science resulted in 946 items. Even though some of those items dealt with other marine organisms or were focused on some related issues (such as oceanographic processes), that result represents a large number of scientific contributions on the topic of how climate may influence seabird ecology. The influence of climate on marine organisms has been extensively studied in seabirds because, compared to most other species (except some marine mammals such as seals and sealions), their demography and population dynamics can be easily monitored in breeding colonies.Up to the 90s, the changes in demographic parameters and population size in seabirds were explored mostly in relation to intrinsic features of the colonies such as their size or the presence of predators (Hunt et al., 1986). The effects of climate (mostly in the form of oceanographic indices) on seabird ecology were seldom analyzed in those years (Myres, 1979), and research efforts were addressed mostly to determining the distribution of seabirds at sea (Abrams, 1985). The influence of oceanographic features was outlined especially when extreme and anomalous events occurred (such as cyclones or El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) years (e.g., Blomqvist and Peterz, 1984;Graybill and Hodder, 1985), whereas some pioneering studies dealt with the relationship between climatic ev...

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Section: Predicting the Future Impacts Of Climate On Seabirdsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Seabirds and climate: knowledge, pitfalls, and opportunities

Oró

2014

Front. Ecol. Evol.

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“…less than16 mm of rainfall from June to September in 2007, table 1). Black rats probably arrived on Bagaud Island hundreds of years ago when the nearby Port-Cros Island was occupied by humans during the Roman period [25], and are the highest order resident predator on the island. Black rats were captured over 14 sessions spanning 22 months from April 2007 to January 2009, in 81 permanent trap stations (BTS-Mécanique, Manufrance, Saint Etienne, France) over three distinct habitats (total area 4.25 ha; total length 500 m).…”

Section: Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

The influence of spatio-temporal resource fluctuations on insular rat population dynamics

Russell

Ruffino

2011

Proc. R. Soc. B.

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Local spatio-temporal resource variations can strongly influence the population dynamics of small mammals. This is particularly true on islands which are bottom-up driven systems, lacking higher order predators and with high variability in resource subsidies. The influence of resource fluctuations on animal survival may be mediated by individual movement among habitat patches, but simultaneously analysing survival, resource availability and habitat selection requires sophisticated analytical methods. We use a Bayesian multi-state capture-recapture model to estimate survival and movement probabilities of non-native black rats (Rattus rattus) across three habitats seasonally varying in resource availability. We find that survival varies most strongly with temporal rainfall patterns, overwhelming minor spatial variation among habitats. Surprisingly for a generalist forager, movement between habitats was rare, suggesting individuals do not opportunistically respond to spatial resource subsidy variations. Climate is probably the main driver of rodent population dynamics on islands, and even substantial habitat and seasonal spatial subsidies are overwhelmed in magnitude by predictable annual patterns in resource pulses. Marked variation in survival and capture has important implications for the timing of rat control.

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“…Rattus rattus has been identified as the most damaging invasive rodent to island ecosystems (Ruffino et al 2009, Traveset et al 2009, Banks and Hughes 2012; and globally, R. rattus is associated with the greatest number of declines or extinctions of native island biota . Because most of the islands in the Pacific lacked native land mammals, native flora and fauna are particularly at risk to the negative effects of introduced rodents such as R. rattus.…”

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confidence: 99%