Life-history predicts global population responses to the weather in terrestrial mammals
Abstract
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 worlds ecosystems to explore the link between life-history and climate-change responses. Here, we use long-term abundance records from 157 species of terrestrial mammal 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 to their shorter-living counterparts with larger litters. These results highlight the role of species-level life-history in driving responses to the environment.
Data availability
All data presented in the current manuscript is publicly available. All code and analyses are fully available and archived in the following Zenodo repository: 10.5281/zenodo.6620489, which was created from the folowing github repository: https://github.com/jjackson-eco/mammal_weather_lifehistory.
-
Inferring the mammal tree: Species-level sets of phylogenies for questions in ecology, evolution, and conservation.https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000494.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
Danish Independent Research Fund (DFF-6108-00467B)
- John Jackson
- Owen Jones
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Copyright
© 2022, Jackson et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
Metrics
-
- 3,157
- views
-
- 570
- downloads
-
- 9
- citations
Views, downloads and citations are aggregated across all versions of this paper published by eLife.
Download links
Downloads (link to download the article as PDF)
Open citations (links to open the citations from this article in various online reference manager services)
Cite this article (links to download the citations from this article in formats compatible with various reference manager tools)
Further reading
-
- Ecology
Bathymodioline mussels dominate deep-sea methane seep and hydrothermal vent habitats and obtain nutrients and energy primarily through chemosynthetic endosymbiotic bacteria in the bacteriocytes of their gill. However, the molecular mechanisms that orchestrate mussel host–symbiont interactions remain unclear. Here, we constructed a comprehensive cell atlas of the gill in the mussel Gigantidas platifrons from the South China Sea methane seeps (1100 m depth) using single-nucleus RNA-sequencing (snRNA-seq) and whole-mount in situ hybridisation. We identified 13 types of cells, including three previously unknown ones, and uncovered unknown tissue heterogeneity. Every cell type has a designated function in supporting the gill’s structure and function, creating an optimal environment for chemosynthesis, and effectively acquiring nutrients from the endosymbiotic bacteria. Analysis of snRNA-seq of in situ transplanted mussels clearly showed the shifts in cell state in response to environmental oscillations. Our findings provide insight into the principles of host–symbiont interaction and the bivalves' environmental adaption mechanisms.
-
- Ecology
Predator-prey arms races have led to the evolution of finely tuned disguise strategies. While the theoretical benefits of predator camouflage are well established, no study has yet been able to quantify its consequences for hunting success in natural conditions. We used high-resolution movement data to quantify how barn owls (Tyto alba) conceal their approach when using a sit-and-wait strategy. We hypothesized that hunting barn owls would modulate their landing force, potentially reducing noise levels in the vicinity of prey. Analysing 87,957 landings by 163 individuals equipped with GPS tags and accelerometers, we show that barn owls reduce their landing force as they approach their prey, and that landing force predicts the success of the following hunting attempt. Landing force also varied with the substrate, being lowest on man-made poles in field boundaries. The physical environment, therefore, affects the capacity for sound camouflage, providing an unexpected link between predator-prey interactions and land use. Finally, hunting strike forces in barn owls were the highest recorded in any bird, relative to body mass, highlighting the range of selective pressures that act on landings and the capacity of these predators to modulate their landing force. Overall, our results provide the first measurements of landing force in a wild setting, revealing a new form of motion-induced sound camouflage and its link to hunting success.