Hot droughts compromise interannual survival across all group sizes in a cooperatively breeding bird.
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Publication Date
2020-12Journal Title
Ecology letters
ISSN
1461-023X
Publisher
Wiley-Blackwell
Volume
23
Issue
12
Pages
1776-1788
Language
eng
Type
Article
This Version
AM
Physical Medium
Print-Electronic
Metadata
Show full item recordCitation
Bourne, A. R., Cunningham, S. J., Spottiswoode, C., & Ridley, A. R. (2020). Hot droughts compromise interannual survival across all group sizes in a cooperatively breeding bird.. Ecology letters, 23 (12), 1776-1788. https://doi.org/10.1111/ele.13604
Abstract
Climate change is affecting animal populations around the world and one relatively unexplored aspect of species vulnerability is whether and to what extent responses to environmental stressors might be mitigated by variation in group size in social species. We used a 15-year dataset for a cooperatively-breeding bird, the southern pied babbler Turdoides bicolor, to determine the impact of temperature, rainfall, and group size on body mass change and interannual survival in both juveniles and adults. Hot and dry conditions were associated with reduced juvenile growth, mass loss in adults, and compromised survival between years in both juveniles (86% reduction in interannual survival) and adults (60% reduction in interannual survival). Individuals across all group sizes experienced similar effects of climatic conditions. Larger group sizes may not buffer individual group members against the impacts of hot and dry conditions, which are expected to increase in frequency and severity in future.
Keywords
Animals, Passeriformes, Humans, Breeding, Droughts, Climate Change
Sponsorship
DST-NRF Centre of Excellence at the FitzPatrick Institute for African Ornithology, the University of Cape Town, the Oppenheimer Memorial Trust (Grant No. 20747/01 to ARB)
British Ornithologists’ Union
Australian Research Council (Grant No. FT110100188 to ARR)
BBSRC David Phillips Fellowship (BB/J014109/1 to CNS)
National Research Foundation of South Africa (Grant No. 110506 to SJC).
Funder references
BBSRC (BB/J014109/1)
European Research Council (294494)
Embargo Lift Date
2021-09-17
Identifiers
External DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/ele.13604
This record's URL: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/310253
Rights
All rights reserved