Item Details

title

Decadal-scale variation in diet forecasts persistently poor breeding under ocean warming in a tropical seabird

author

Tompkins, E.

author

Townsend, H.

author

Anderson, D.

abstract

Climate change effects on population dynamics of natural populations are well documented at higher latitudes, where relatively rapid warming illuminates cause-effect relationships, but not in the tropics and especially the marine tropics, where warming has been slow. Here we forecast the indirect effect of ocean warming on a top predator, Nazca boobies in the equatorial Galápagos Islands, where rising water temperature is expected to exceed the upper thermal tolerance of a key prey item in the future, severely reducing its availability within the boobies’ foraging envelope. From 1983 to 1997 boobies ate mostly sardines, a densely aggregated, highly nutritious food. From 1997 until the present, flying fish, a lower quality food, replaced sardines. Breeding success under the poor diet fell dramatically, causing the population growth rate to fall below 1, indicating a shrinking population. Population growth may not recover: rapid future warming is predicted around Galápagos, usually exceeding the upper lethal temperature and maximum spawning temperature of sardines within 100 years, displacing them permanently from the boobies’ island-constrained foraging range. This provides rare evidence of the effect of ocean warming on a tropical marine vertebrate.

subject

animal sexual behavior

birds

climate change

trophic interactions

foraging

diet

ocean temperature

population growth

date

2020-03-09T14:27:41Z (accessioned)

2020-03-09T14:27:41Z (available)

8/23/17 (issued)

identifier

Tompkins EM, Townsend HM, Anderson DJ (2017) Decadal-scale variation in diet forecasts persistently poor breeding under ocean warming in a tropical seabird. PLoS ONE 12(8): e0182545. (citation)

http://hdl.handle.net/10339/96035 (uri)

identifier

ttps://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0182545 (doi)

language

en (iso)

publisher

PLOS

rights

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (uri)

source

PLOS ONE

type

Article