The relative importance of food abundance and weather on the growth of a sub-arctic shorebird chick

Understanding how environmental conditions affect growth is important because conditions experienced during early development could have immediate as well as long-term fitness consequences. Annual fluctuations in (environmental) conditions may influence life histories of entire cohorts of offspring....

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Behavioral ecology and sociobiology 2018-03, Vol.72 (3), p.1-12, Article 42
Main Authors: Machín, Paula, Fernández-Elipe, Juan, Klaassen, Raymond H. G.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Abundance
Animal Ecology
Annual variations
Aquatic birds
Availability
Behavioral Sciences
Biomedical and Life Sciences
Body temperature
Body weight
Breeding seasons
Chickens
Chicks
Climate change
Environmental conditions
Evolution
Fitness
Food
Food availability
Growth rate
Hatching
Life history
Life Sciences
Offspring
Original Article
Physical growth
Population dynamics
Prey
Reproductive fitness
Seasons
Variation
Weather
Zoology
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Understanding how environmental conditions affect growth is important because conditions experienced during early development could have immediate as well as long-term fitness consequences. Annual fluctuations in (environmental) conditions may influence life histories of entire cohorts of offspring. In birds, food availability and weather have been identified to affect chick growth. However, the relative importance of these factors in explaining growth in different years is poorly understood. We studied the growth of golden plover Pluvialis apricaria chicks by radio-tracking individuals from hatching till fledging and related variation in chick growth to food availability (as sampled by pitfall trapping) and weather conditions. 2011 appeared to be a favourable season in which the chicks achieved notably fast growth rates. In 2013, in contrast, chicks were lagging behind in growth and possibly even achieved smaller ultimate sizes. Food abundance had a dominant effect on growth, whereas temperature only had short-term effects (at least in body weight). Thus, variation in food availability rather than variation in weather could explain the marked difference in growth of the plover chicks between the years. A short but intense flush oiBibio flies late in the breeding season in 2011 seems the reason why the plover chicks managed to achieve high growth rates in that year, despite hatching after the main arthropod peak. Thus, understanding cohort effects in the growth of plover chicks, for example in relation to climate change, requires an understanding of the seasonal dynamics of individual prey species.
ISSN:0340-5443
1432-0762
DOI:10.1007/s00265-018-2457-y