Warm temperatures during cold season can negatively affect adult survival in an alpine bird

Abstract

Climate seasonality is a predominant constraint on the lifecycles of species in alpine and polar biomes. Assessing the response of these species to climate change thus requires taking into account seasonal constraints on populations. However, interactions between seasonality, weather fluctuations, and population parameters remain poorly explored as they require long‐term studies with high sampling frequency. This study investigated the influence of environmental covariates on the demography of a corvid species, the alpine chough Pyrrhocorax graculus, in the highly seasonal environment of the Mont Blanc region. In two steps, we estimated: (1) the seasonal survival of categories of individuals based on their age, sex, etc., (2) the effect of environmental covariates on seasonal survival. We hypothesized that the cold season—and more specifically, the end of the cold season (spring)—would be a critical period for individuals, and we expected that weather and individual covariates would influence survival variation during critical periods. We found that while spring was a critical season for adult female survival, it was not for males. This is likely because females are dominated by males at feeding sites during snowy seasons (winter and spring), and additionally must invest energy in egg production. When conditions were not favorable, which seemed to happen when the cold season was warmer than usual, females probably reached their physiological limits. Surprisingly, adult survival was higher at the beginning of the cold season than in summer, which may result from adaptation to harsh weather in alpine and polar vertebrates. This hypothesis could be confirmed by testing it with larger sets of populations. This first seasonal analysis of individual survival over the full life cycle in a sedentary alpine bird shows that including seasonality in demographic investigations is crucial to better understand the potential impacts of climate change on cold ecosystems.

Warming threatens habitat suitability and breeding occupancy of rear‐edge alpine bird specialists

“…As in the case of cold‐adapted species (Pearce‐Higgins et al 2015, Scridel et al 2017, Chiffard et al 2019), temperature was found to be among the most important factors influencing the habitat suitability of the alpine specialists of our study; too high temperatures increase physiological stress (Wingfield et al 2011) and reduce reproductive success (Rauter and Reyer 2000, Dreitz et al 2012), but can also cause phenological mismatches between peaks of food availability and energetic demands (Tulp and Schekkerman 2008), and/or increase interspecific competition and predation risk (Jankowski et al 2010, Lurgi et al 2012).…”

Compensatory Breeding in Years Following Drought in a Desert-Dwelling Cooperative Breeder

“…Variations in seasonal weather patterns and the occurrence of extreme weather events such as droughts, floods, and heatwaves are among the primary drivers of variation in individual success in vertebrates, influencing reproduction and survival both directly and indirectly, often via effects on resource availability (Harrison et al, 2011). To date, most research on the within and between season effects of weather patterns and extreme events has focused on the influence within an annual cycle (Saino et al, 2011;Laplante et al, 2019) of (a) conditions during early development on individual success as a nestling (Pérez et al, 2008;Auer and Martin, 2017;Ospina et al, 2018), fledgling (Blomberg et al, 2014;de Zwaan et al, 2019), or adult (Porcelli et al, 2016;Hsu et al, 2017;Marshall et al, 2017) and (b) seasonal weather conditions on body mass (Loison and Langvatn, 1998;van de Pol et al, 2016), behavior (Akresh et al, 2019;Rauber et al, 2019), survival (Berryman and Lima, 2006;Gardner et al, 2017Gardner et al, , 2018Woodworth et al, 2017;Chiffard et al, 2019), and reproductive investment (Clutton-Brock et al, 1991;Monteuil-Spencer, 2017).…”

Webcams as a Remote Tool for Eco-ethological Research: A Study on the Alpine Chough

“…In high elevation ecosystems, weather conditions may significantly affect several aspect of bird biology. Results of a 27 years demographic research project on marked Alpine Choughs at GM suggested that high winter and spring temperatures may affect spring survival, especially of females (Chiffard et al, 2019). The present study demonstrates that harsh weather conditions may also drive birds' flocking behaviour.…”

“…The potential foraging advantage of flocking, however, is unclear, because in larger flocks birds feed faster, but stay for a shorter time in patches (Delestrade, 1995;Rolando et al, 1997;Vallino et al, 2019). Recent long term research carried out in the French Alps showed that survival of females decreased with increased flock size, likely because their food provisioning is prevented by males, which are dominant (Chiffard et al, 2019).…”