A demographic approach to understanding the effects of climate on population growth
- PDF / 1,143,827 Bytes
- 13 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 81 Downloads / 178 Views
POPULATION ECOLOGY – ORIGINAL RESEARCH
A demographic approach to understanding the effects of climate on population growth Nicholas M. Caruso1,2 · Christina L. Staudhammer1 · Leslie J. Rissler1,3 Received: 12 November 2019 / Accepted: 10 August 2020 © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Amphibian life history traits are affected by temperature and precipitation. Yet, connecting these relationships to population growth, especially for multiple populations within a species, is lacking and precludes our understanding of amphibian population dynamics and distributions. Therefore, we constructed integral projection models for five populations along an elevational gradient to determine how climate and season affect population growth of a terrestrial salamander Plethodon montanus and the importance of demographic vital rates to population growth under varying climate scenarios. We found that population growth was typically higher at the highest elevation compared to the lower elevations, whereas varying inactive season conditions, represented by the late fall, winter and early spring, produced a greater variation in population growth than varying active season conditions (late spring, summer, and early fall). Furthermore, survival and growth were consistently more important, as measured by elasticity, compared to fecundity, and large females had the greatest elasticity compared to all other body sizes. Our results suggest that changing inactive season conditions, especially those that would affect the survival of large individuals, may have the greatest impact on population growth. We recommend future experimental studies focus on the inactive season to better elucidate the mechanisms by which these conditions can affect survival. Keywords Elasticity · Elevation · Integral projection model · Plethodon · Population growth
Introduction Climate is a major driver of amphibian life history (Morrison and Hero 2003) as temperature and precipitation play a key role in amphibian physiological processes (Wells 2007; Ficetola and Maiorano 2016). Cooler climates often lead to larger body size, larger clutches and eggs, and less Communicated by John Loehr. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-020-04731-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Nicholas M. Caruso [email protected] 1
Department of Biological Sciences, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL 35487, USA
2
Present Address: Department of Fish and Wildlife Conservation, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, VA 24061, USA
3
Present Address: Division of Environmental Biology, National Science Foundation, Alexandria, VA 22314, USA
frequent clutches among populations of the same species distributed over geographic space (Tilley 1980; Berven and Gill 1983; Peterman et al. 2016; reviewed in Morrison and Hero 2003). Even within populations, warmer temperatures have been associated with reductions in bo
Data Loading...
