Citation: Sandvik, H., and K. E. Erikstad (2008) Seabird life histories and climatic fluctuations: a phylogenetic-comparative time series analysis of North Atlantic seabirds. Ecography, 31, 73–83.
doi: 10.1111/j.2007.0906-7590.05090.x [what’s a doi?].
Key words: Adult survival, climatic responsiveness, demography, North Atlantic Oscillation, offspring production, phylogenetic-comparative analysis.
Abstract: In the light of the predicted changes in climate as a
consequence of global warming, it is a major concern how animal species will respond
to altered meteorological and oceanographic conditions. Seabirds constitute a diverse
group of marine top predators which have relatively low fecundity and high annual
survival rates. In order to predict effects of climate change, it is a necessary
precondition to first understand responses to naturally occurring climatic
fluctuations. While the ecological effects of different large-scale climatic
phenomena have received much attention in the recent past, the factors determining
the responses of seabirds are still little understood. We analyze more than a hundred
previously published time series of seabird offspring production and adult survival
rates in the North Atlantic in order to detect climatic signals in this data base.
As our analyses are phylogenetic-comparative, we are able to search for patterns
across species. Using the correlation of these parameters with the North Atlantic
Oscillation (NAO) as a measure of responsiveness to climatic variability, we find
that effects of climate on either parameters considered are not more common than
expected by chance. The magnitudes of the responsivenesses were not entirely randomly
distributed throughout the seabird phylogeny, but were not strongly related to the
explanatory variables considered. However, some tendencies indicate that both
life-history traits and feeding ecology may influence how seabirds respond to
climatic variability. An explanation of those patterns based on life-history theory
is given.
Full text: © 2008 The authors. If you accept (i) the conditions specified in the Creative Commons "Attribution-NonCommercial-NonDerivs" 2.5 licence, and (ii) that printouts have to be made on recycled paper, you may download the article here (pdf, 0.2 MB).
Supplementary material: The Appendix with Tables S1, S2, S3 and S4 is available here (pdf, 0.1 MB).