Energetic and Fitness Costs of Mismatching Resource Supply and Demand in Seasonally Breeding Birds
Abstract
By advancing spring leaf flush and ensuing food availability, climatic warming results in a mismatch between the timing of peak food supply and nestling demand, shifting the optimal time for reproduction in birds. Two populations of blue tits (Parus caeruleus) that breed at different dates in similar, but spatially distinct, habitat types in Corsica and southern France provide a unique opportunity to quantify the energetic and fitness consequences when breeding is mismatched with local productivity. As food supply and demand become progressively mismatched, the increased cost of rearing young pushes the metabolic effort of adults beyond their apparent sustainable limit, drastically reducing the persistence of adults in the breeding population. We provide evidence that the economics of parental foraging and limits to sustainable metabolic effort are key selective forces underlying synchronized seasonal breeding and long-term shifts in breeding date in response to climatic change.
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We calculated FMR24-h for 13 Corsican and 13 continental adults using the single pool equation (equation 7.17) from Speakman (24). FMR24-h did not differ significantly between males and females in either population, so sexes were pooled. Because only daytime (sunrise to sunset) FMR is directly related to nest provisioning, we subtracted nighttime metabolic rates from FMR24-h to leave FMRday. We estimated nighttime metabolic rate (mW) as 609.64 − 17.41 · Ta, where Ta is average ambient temperature recorded during the measurement night (21). BMR was 15.5 mW/g and 17.5 mW/g for birds from the continental and Corsican populations, respectively (D. W. Thomas, J. Blondel, P. Perret, Zoology, in press).
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We thank Jane Mclaren and Peter Thomson for technical assistance with isotope analyses. Supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and Fonds FCAR (Québec) (D.W.T.) and by CNRS (J.B.). This is contribution 151 of the Groupe de Recherche en Écologie, Nutrition et Énergétique, Université de Sherbrooke.
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Published In
Science
Volume 291 | Issue 5513
30 March 2001
30 March 2001
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Received: 15 November 2000
Accepted: 22 February 2001
Published in print: 30 March 2001
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