The effect of climate change on laying dates, clutch size and productivity of Eurasian Coots Fulica atra
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ORIGINAL PAPER
The effect of climate change on laying dates, clutch size and productivity of Eurasian Coots Fulica atra Lucyna Halupka 1
&
Beata Czyż 2
&
Carlos Moises Macias Dominguez 2
Received: 6 November 2019 / Revised: 1 May 2020 / Accepted: 19 July 2020 # The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Climate change is affecting many living organisms; however, the responses of many of them remain unknown. In this paper, we present the results regarding the response of a bird species from the rallid family to the increased temperatures during the breeding season. We analysed the breeding data of Eurasian Coots nesting during 30 seasons between 1972 and 2019. During the study period, mean temperatures in April, the month when Coots start nesting, increased by 3.5 °C, and in months corresponding with the species breeding season by 2.6 °C. Breeding Coots advanced their earliest and median laying dates across the study period; however, the duration of their breeding season remained unchanged. We did not detect any significant temporal changes in clutch size, but clutches have become much more variable in size throughout the study period. Nest failures and production of offspring per nest did not change over the study period; however, the production of young per successful nest significantly declined. It is likely that this decline is the effect of mismatch between the period of food abundance (dipterans collected from water), and hatchling emergence, which is advanced due to change in climate. Future studies investigating the occurrence of dipteran resources at water bodies are needed to test this hypothesis. Keywords Climate change . Breeding . Clutch size . Phenology . Eurasian Coot . Fulica atra
Introduction The global mean temperature has been steadily rising across the last decades, and it seems that the current warming trend is unprecedented over decades to millennia (IPCC 2014; Houghton 2015). Changes in temperature affect other meteorological conditions, like humidity and precipitation patterns, and result in a change of climatic conditions in many places of the globe. Climatic changes affect a wide range of living organisms, including birds. Although birds remain one of the best studied groups with regard to climate change, the proportion of species Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s00484-020-01972-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Lucyna Halupka [email protected] 1
Ornithological Station, University of Wrocław, Sienkiewicza 21, 50-335 Wrocław, Poland
2
Department of Behavioural Ecology, University of Wrocław, Sienkiewicza 21, 50-335 Wrocław, Poland
investigated in this context is still very low. Most avian studies related to climate-driven changes in breeding performance have concentrated on passerines (Husby et al. 2009; Vatka et al. 2011; Tarwater and Arcese 2018; Dyrcz and Czyż 2018), birds of prey and owls (Lehikoinen et al. 2011; Terraube et al. 2014), waterbirds (Moe et al. 2009; Wanless et al.
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