1. Ecology

Life-history predicts global population responses to the weather in terrestrial mammals

  1. John Jackson  Is a corresponding author
  2. Christie Le Coeur
  3. Owen Jones
  1. University of Oxford, United Kingdom
  2. University of Oslo, Norway
  3. University of Southern Denmark, Denmark
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.74161
Share this article
Cite this article
  1. John Jackson
  2. Christie Le Coeur
  3. Owen Jones
(2022)
Life-history predicts global population responses to the weather in terrestrial mammals
eLife 11:e74161.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.74161
  2. Download BibTeX
  3. Download .RIS

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.

The following previously published data sets were used

Article and author information

Author details

  1. John Jackson

    2.Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom
    For correspondence
    john.jackson@zoo.ox.ac.uk
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-4563-2840

  2. Christie Le Coeur

    Department of Biosciences, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

  3. Owen Jones

    Department of Biology, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

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.

Reviewing Editor

  1. Bernhard Schmid, University of Zurich, Switzerland

Version history

  1. Preprint posted: April 22, 2021 (view preprint)
  2. Received: September 23, 2021
  3. Accepted: June 30, 2022
  4. Accepted Manuscript published: July 1, 2022 (version 1)
  5. Version of Record published: July 22, 2022 (version 2)

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

  • 3,010
    views
  • 556
    downloads
  • 8
    citations

Views, downloads and citations are aggregated across all versions of this paper published by eLife.

Download links

A two-part list of links to download the article, or parts of the article, in various formats.

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)

  1. John Jackson
  2. Christie Le Coeur
  3. Owen Jones
(2022)
Life-history predicts global population responses to the weather in terrestrial mammals
eLife 11:e74161.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.74161

Share this article

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.74161

Categories and tags

Further reading

    1. Computational and Systems Biology
    2. Ecology

    Collaborative hunting in artificial agents with deep reinforcement learning

    Kazushi Tsutsui, Ryoya Tanaka ... Keisuke Fujii
    Research Article

    Collaborative hunting, in which predators play different and complementary roles to capture prey, has been traditionally believed to be an advanced hunting strategy requiring large brains that involve high-level cognition. However, recent findings that collaborative hunting has also been documented in smaller-brained vertebrates have placed this previous belief under strain. Here, using computational multi-agent simulations based on deep reinforcement learning, we demonstrate that decisions underlying collaborative hunts do not necessarily rely on sophisticated cognitive processes. We found that apparently elaborate coordination can be achieved through a relatively simple decision process of mapping between states and actions related to distance-dependent internal representations formed by prior experience. Furthermore, we confirmed that this decision rule of predators is robust against unknown prey controlled by humans. Our computational ecological results emphasize that collaborative hunting can emerge in various intra- and inter-specific interactions in nature, and provide insights into the evolution of sociality.

    1. Ecology
    2. Evolutionary Biology

    Evolutionary trade-offs in dormancy phenology

    Théo Constant, F Stephen Dobson ... Sylvain Giroud
    Research Article

    Seasonal animal dormancy is widely interpreted as a physiological response for surviving energetic challenges during the harshest times of the year (the physiological constraint hypothesis). However, there are other mutually non-exclusive hypotheses to explain the timing of animal dormancy, that is, entry into and emergence from hibernation (i.e. dormancy phenology). Survival advantages of dormancy that have been proposed are reduced risks of predation and competition (the ‘life-history’ hypothesis), but comparative tests across animal species are few. Using the phylogenetic comparative method applied to more than 20 hibernating mammalian species, we found support for both hypotheses as explanations for the phenology of dormancy. In accordance with the life-history hypotheses, sex differences in hibernation emergence and immergence were favored by the sex difference in reproductive effort. In addition, physiological constraint may influence the trade-off between survival and reproduction such that low temperatures and precipitation, as well as smaller body mass, influence sex differences in phenology. We also compiled initial evidence that ectotherm dormancy may be (1) less temperature dependent than previously thought and (2) associated with trade-offs consistent with the life-history hypothesis. Thus, dormancy during non-life-threatening periods that are unfavorable for reproduction may be more widespread than previously thought.

    1. Ecology

    Intra- and interspecific diversity in a tropical plant clade alter herbivory and ecosystem resilience

    Ari Grele, Tara J Massad ... Lora A Richards
    Research Article

    Declines in biodiversity generated by anthropogenic stressors at both species and population levels can alter emergent processes instrumental to ecosystem function and resilience. As such, understanding the role of biodiversity in ecosystem function and its response to climate perturbation is increasingly important, especially in tropical systems where responses to changes in biodiversity are less predictable and more challenging to assess experimentally. Using large-scale transplant experiments conducted at five neotropical sites, we documented the impacts of changes in intraspecific and interspecific plant richness in the genus Piper on insect herbivory, insect richness, and ecosystem resilience to perturbations in water availability. We found that reductions of both intraspecific and interspecific Piper diversity had measurable and site-specific effects on herbivory, herbivorous insect richness, and plant mortality. The responses of these ecosystem-relevant processes to reduced intraspecific Piper richness were often similar in magnitude to the effects of reduced interspecific richness. Increased water availability reduced herbivory by 4.2% overall, and the response of herbivorous insect richness and herbivory to water availability were altered by both intra- and interspecific richness in a site-dependent manner. Our results underscore the role of intraspecific and interspecific richness as foundations of ecosystem function and the importance of community and location-specific contingencies in controlling function in complex tropical systems.