scholarly journals Spatial synchrony of breeding success in the blacklegged kittiwake Rissa tridactyla reflects the spatial dynamics of its sandeel prey

2020 ◽  
Vol 638 ◽  
pp. 177-190
Author(s):  
AB Olin ◽  
NS Banas ◽  
PJ Wright ◽  
MR Heath ◽  
RG Nager

Synchrony in demographic rates between spatially disjunct populations is a widespread phenomenon, although the underlying mechanisms are often not known. This synchrony and its spatial patterns can have important consequences for the long-term persistence of metapopulations and can also be used to infer drivers of population dynamics. Here, we examined spatial patterns of synchrony in the breeding success of black-legged kittiwakes Rissa tridactyla in the UK, using an extensive dataset on kittiwake breeding success and 2 different ways of measuring synchrony: one reflecting synchrony in inter-annual fluctuations only (rdiff) and one reflecting synchrony in both inter-annual fluctuations and long-term trends (r). We found that between-colony synchrony in breeding success decreased with distance up to just over 200 km but that some colony pairs showed stronger or weaker synchrony than expected based on distance. This was also reflected in the configuration of spatially coherent clusters of kittiwake colonies with synchronous breeding success. Further, we compared the support for different drivers of these spatial patterns, including trophic interactions and weather conditions. We found that the spatial dynamics of the kittiwakes’ main prey in this region, the lesser sandeel Ammodytes marinus, appeared to play some role in generating synchrony in long-term patterns, but their role in generating synchrony in inter-annual fluctuations was less clear. The study shows that examining spatial patterns in synchrony can provide useful information for inferring potential drivers and the spatial scale over which they are acting.

2018 ◽  
Vol 615 ◽  
pp. 177-186 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yusheng Shi ◽  
Tsuneo Matsunaga ◽  
Yasushi Yamaguchi ◽  
Zhengqiang Li ◽  
Xingfa Gu ◽  
...  

Author(s):  
Anand Menon ◽  
Luigi Scazzieri

This chapter examines the history of the United Kingdom’s relationship with the European integration process. The chapter dissects the long-term trends in public opinion and the more contingent, short-term factors that led to the referendum vote to leave the European Union. The UK was a late joiner and therefore unable to shape the early institutional development of the EEC. British political parties and public opinion were always ambiguous about membership and increasingly Eurosceptic from the early 1990s. Yet the UK had a significant impact on the EU’s development, in the development of the single market programme and eastward enlargement. If Brexit goes through, Britain will nevertheless maintain relations with the EU in all policy areas from agriculture to energy and foreign policy. Europeanization will remain a useful theoretical tool to analyse EU–UK relations even if the UK leaves the Union.


2016 ◽  
Vol 47 (5) ◽  
pp. 597-609 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin A. Wood ◽  
Julia L. Newth ◽  
Geoff M. Hilton ◽  
Bart A. Nolet ◽  
Eileen C. Rees

Oryx ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
pp. 583-592 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kate Ashbrook ◽  
Andrew Taylor ◽  
Louise Jane ◽  
Ian Carter ◽  
Tamás Székely

AbstractReintroductions aim to re-establish species within their historical ranges through the release of wild- or captive-bred individuals following extirpation (or extinction) in the wild. There is no general agreement on what constitutes a successful reintroduction but the probability of the population achieving long-term persistence should be addressed. Here we review a 10-year trial reintroduction of the great bustard Otis tarda, a globally threatened bird species, to the UK and assess the long-term population viability. Despite changes in rearing and release strategy, initial post-release survival probability remained consistently low, with only 11.3% of bustards (n = 167) surviving from release to 1 year post-release. Nineteen breeding attempts were made by eight females; however, only one chick survived > 100 days after hatching, and no wild juveniles have recruited into the population. Using demographic rates from the UK population and wild populations elsewhere, and stochastic population modelling, we investigate the viability of this reintroduced population by predicting population size over the next 10 years. Under current demographic rates the population was predicted to decline rapidly. Self-sufficiency was predicted only using the highest estimates from the UK population for first-year and adult survival, and recruitment rates from wild populations elsewhere. Although changes have been made in rearing, release strategies, habitat management and release sites used, these changes appear to have a modest effect on long-term viability. Substantial improvements in survival rates and productivity are necessary to establish a viable great bustard population in the UK, and we consider this unlikely.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jin Feng

<p>Recently, the climatological and environmental communities have paid significant attention to the long-term trends and variations in haze-related weather conditions in North China (NC). This study investigates the issue based on a quantified air stagnation index (ASI<sub>E</sub>) that combines the stagnation intensity with the background emissions, considering that haze occurrence strongly depends on the rate of emission. ASI<sub>E</sub> shows a close spatial and temporal relationship with the observed PM<sub>2.5</sub> concentrations, and a strong sensitivity to haze occurrence in NC. The change in ASI<sub>E</sub> revealed an approximate 19% increase in the annual stagnation intensity over the period of 1980-2018, due to significant decreases in PBLH and ventilation potency. The interannual variations in stagnation intensity were very significant. The percentage change of ASI<sub>E </sub>was as high as 50-70% in some years. However, there was an apparent drop in stagnation intensity during 2013-2018, which possibly contributed to the recently reported improvement in aerosol concentration in NC. It also shows that such low-frequency oscillation occurred twice during 1980-2018. Hence, once the current trend of decreasing stagnation intensity changes, haze events may become more common in the future. Finally, we present a quick estimate for the emission reduction ratio that can balance the variations and trend of stagnation intensity using a simple linear model, which can be used to evaluate the difficulty of the “clean air challenge” in NC. The results suggest that the enforcement of the emission reduction plan should be tailored according to the stagnation conditions in the case study year and region.</p>


Biologia ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 64 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Miroslav Fulin ◽  
Leszek Jerzak ◽  
Tim Sparks ◽  
Piotr Tryjanowski

AbstractChanges in the spring arrival dates of migrant birds have been reported from a range of locations and many authors have focused on long-term trends and their relationship to temperature and other climatic events. Perhaps more importantly, changed arrival dates may have consequences for the breeding dates of birds which strongly influence breeding success. In this paper we take the opportunity provided by a monitoring scheme of the white stork (Ciconia ciconia) to examine several features of the timing of arrival and breeding in relation to chick production in Slovakia during the period 1978–2002. First arrival dates ranged from 5th March to 30th April, and hatching dates varied between 26th April and 8th July. Generally, early arriving pairs started breeding earlier and a shorter interval between the arrival of the first partner and breeding, expressed here as hatching date, resulted in higher breeding success.


2012 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-111 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. V. Donner ◽  
R. Ehrcke ◽  
S. M. Barbosa ◽  
J. Wagner ◽  
J. F. Donges ◽  
...  

Abstract. The study of long-term trends in tide gauge data is important for understanding the present and future risk of changes in sea-level variability for coastal zones, particularly with respect to the ongoing debate on climate change impacts. Traditionally, most corresponding analyses have exclusively focused on trends in mean sea-level. However, such studies are not able to provide sufficient information about changes in the full probability distribution (especially in the more extreme quantiles). As an alternative, in this paper we apply quantile regression (QR) for studying changes in arbitrary quantiles of sea-level variability. For this purpose, we chose two different QR approaches and discuss the advantages and disadvantages of different settings. In particular, traditional linear QR poses very restrictive assumptions that are often not met in reality. For monthly data from 47 tide gauges from along the Baltic Sea coast, the spatial patterns of quantile trends obtained in linear and nonparametric (spline-based) frameworks display marked differences, which need to be understood in order to fully assess the impact of future changes in sea-level variability on coastal areas. In general, QR demonstrates that the general variability of Baltic sea-level has increased over the last decades. Linear quantile trends estimated for sliding windows in time reveal a wide-spread acceleration of trends in the median, but only localised changes in the rates of changes in the lower and upper quantiles.


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