TY - JOUR TI - Life history predicts global population responses to the weather in terrestrial mammals AU - Jackson, John AU - Le Coeur, Christie AU - Jones, Owen A2 - Schmid, Bernhard A2 - Rutz, Christian A2 - Yoccoz, Nigel VL - 11 PY - 2022 DA - 2022/07/01 SP - e74161 C1 - eLife 2022;11:e74161 DO - 10.7554/eLife.74161 UR - https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.74161 AB - With the looming threat of abrupt ecological disruption due to a changing climate, predicting which species are most vulnerable to environmental change is critical. The life-history of a species is an evolved response to its environmental context, and therefore a promising candidate for explaining differences in climate-change responses. However, we need broad empirical assessments from across the world's ecosystems to explore the link between life history and climate-change responses. Here, we use long-term abundance records from 157 species of terrestrial mammals and a two-step Bayesian meta-regression framework to investigate the link between annual weather anomalies, population growth rates, and species-level life history. Overall, we found no directional effect of temperature or precipitation anomalies or variance on annual population growth rates. Furthermore, population responses to weather anomalies were not predicted by phylogenetic covariance, and instead there was more variability in weather responses for populations within a species. Crucially, however, long-lived mammals with smaller litter sizes had smaller absolute population responses to weather anomalies compared with their shorter living counterparts with larger litters. These results highlight the role of species-level life history in driving responses to the environment. KW - climate change KW - demography KW - meta-analysis KW - living planet KW - population decline KW - bayesian statistics JF - eLife SN - 2050-084X PB - eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd ER -