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Publications (193)
Predator Avoidance Strategy
Selective pressures influencing bird migration can include availability of food, pressure from parasites and pathogens, and predation risk. The importance of the last of these is revealed by McKinnon et al. (p. 326 ; see the Perspective by Gilg and Yoccoz ), who present an experimental analysis of the benefits of long-di...
Significant progress has been made in our understanding of species-level responses to climate change, but upscaling to entire ecosystems remains a challenge. This task is particularly urgent in the Arctic, where global warming is most pronounced. Here we report the results of an international collaboration on the direct and indirect effects of clim...
Arctic wildlife is often presented as being highly at risk in the face of current climate warming. We use the long-term (up to 24 years) monitoring records available on Bylot Island in the Canadian Arctic to examine temporal trends in population attributes of several terrestrial vertebrates and in primary production. Despite a warming trend (e.g. c...
Despite observational evidence of carry-over effects (COEs, events occurring in one season that produce residual effects on individuals the following seasons), to our knowledge no experimental studies have been carried out to explore how COEs might affect reproductive output. We simulated an environmental perturbation affecting spring-staging migra...
The seasonal decline of avian clutch size may result from the conflict between the advantage of early breeding (greater offspring value) and the advantage of a delay in lay date (improved body condition and hence clutch size). We tested predictions of a condition-dependent individual optimization model based on this trade-off (Rowe et al. 1994) in...
Seasonal migrants transport energy, nutrients, contaminants, parasites and diseases, while also connecting distant food webs between communities and ecosystems, which contributes to structuring meta-communities and meta-ecosystems. However, we currently lack a framework to characterize the structure of the spatial connections maintained by all migr...
Documentation of Carry‐Over Effects (COEs), defined as effects resulting from events that occurred in a previous time period, has largely been observational and understanding of specific mechanisms underlying COEs is still lacking. To investigate this, we simulated an environmental perturbation during the spring migration of a long‐lived bird speci...
Long-term monitoring of wildlife populations has greatly contributed to our current understanding of population dynamics and ecosystem functioning. Despite tireless field campaigns, however, only a fraction of the biodiversity has been monitored to date and the dynamics of potential key species have yet to be understood.
Here, we propose a method b...
The effects of indirect biotic interactions on species occurrence are difficult to quantify in the wild. In theory, the exclusion of a prey species can occur through the numerical and functional responses of a predator to another prey. Few studies assessed the relative effects of these responses on the net interaction strength between multiple prey...
Prey handling processes are considered a dominant mechanism leading to short‐term positive indirect effects between prey that share a predator. However, a growing body of research indicates that predators are not necessarily limited by such processes in the wild. Density‐dependent changes in predator foraging behavior can also generate positive ind...
Predation shapes communities through consumptive and non‐consumptive effects. In the latter case, prey respond to perceived predation risk through proactive or reactive risk management strategies occurring at different spatial and temporal scales. The predator–prey space race and landscape of fear concepts are useful to better understand how predat...
In colonially breeding marine predators, individual movements and colonial segregation are influenced by seascape characteristics. Tidewater glacier fronts are important features of the Arctic seascape and are often described as foraging hotspots. Albeit their documented importance for wildlife, little is known about their structuring effect on Arc...
Tidewater glacier fronts can represent important foraging areas for Arctic predators. Their ecological importance is likely to change in a warmer Arctic. Their profitability and use by consumers are expected to vary in time, but the underlying mechanisms driving such variation remain poorly known. The subglacial plume, originating from meltwater di...
Long-distance migratory seabirds need to adjust their migration strategy according to internal (breeding, molting) and external factors (seasonality, resource availability). Time-minimizing strategies are common during spring migration to arrive at the optimal time to breed. We studied the annual movements and migration strategy of the long-tailed...
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A bstract
Prey handling processes are considered a key driver of short-term positive indirect effects between prey sharing the same predator. However, a growing body of research indicates that predators are rarely limited by such processes in the wild. Density-dependent changes in predator foraging be-havior can also generate positive indirect...
Long-distance migrants are under strong selection to arrive on their breeding grounds at a time that maximizes fitness. Many arctic birds start nesting shortly after snow recedes from their breeding sites and timing of snowmelt can vary substantially over the breeding range of widespread species. We tested the hypothesis that migration schedules of...
Salt marshes are vulnerable to climate change-associated sea-level rise and storm-induced surges. Their degradation will likely affect shorebirds relying on this ecosystem. Least Sandpiper (Calidris minutilla) and Pectoral Sandpiper (Calidris melanotos) migrating along coastline habitats typically use salt marshes to rest and replenish their body r...
Indirect effects resulting from species sharing the same enemy can shape spatio-temporal variations in species occurrence. The strength of such effects remains poorly known in natural communities composed of species from different trophic levels interacting in heterogeneous landscapes. Benefiting from a well-known arctic vertebrate community and ma...
The global lockdown to mitigate COVID-19 pandemic health risks has altered human interactions with nature. Here, we report immediate impacts of changes in human activities on wildlife and environmental threats during the early lockdown months of 2020, based on 877 qualitative reports and 332 quantitative assessments from 89 different studies. Hundr...
Understanding and predicting large-scale ecological responses to global environmental change requires comparative studies across geographic scales with coordinated efforts and standardized methodologies. We designed, applied and assessed standardized protocols to measure tundra herbivory at three spatial scales: plot, site (habitat), and study area...
The functional response is at the core of any predator-prey interactions as it establishes the link between trophic levels. The use of inaccurate functional response can profoundly affect the outcomes of population and community models. Yet most functional responses are evaluated using phenomenological models which often fail to discriminate among...
Most birds incubate their eggs, which requires time and energy at the expense of other activities. Birds generally have two incubation strategies: biparental where both mates cooperate in incubating eggs, and uniparental where a single parent incubates. In harsh and unpredictable environments, incubation is challenging due to high energetic demands...
Overabundant species can have major impacts on their habitat and induce trophic cascades within ecosystems. In North America, the overabundant greater snow goose (Anser caerulescens atlanticus) has been successfully controlled through special spring hunting regulations since 1999. Hunting is a source of mortality but also of disturbance, which affe...
Geese can profoundly affect arctic ecosystems directly (e.g., by grazing vegetation) and indirectly (e.g. by changing nutrient cycling resulting from faces inputs and by reducing plant litter). In the Arctic, behavior and abundance of geese have changed due to climate and land-use change. While the short-term effects of increased goose populations...
The Arctic is entering a new ecological state, with alarming consequences for humanity. Animal-borne sensors offer a window into these changes. Although substantial animal tracking data from the Arctic and subarctic exist, most are difficult to discover and access. Here, we present the new Arctic Animal Movement Archive (AAMA), a growing collection...
The Arctic is entering a new ecological state, with alarming consequences for humanity. Animal-borne sensors offer a window into these changes. Although substantial animal tracking data from the Arctic and subarctic exist, most are difficult to discover and access. Here, we present the new Arctic Animal Movement Archive (AAMA), a growing collection...
The functional response is central to our understanding of any predator–prey system as it establishes the link between trophic levels. Most functional responses are evaluated using phenomenological models linking predator acquisition rate and prey density. However, our ability to measure functional responses using such an approach is often limited...
Coupling isotope values of feathers and satellite tracking of individuals have the potential to reveal multi-season linkages between wintering habitat, diet and carry-over effects on reproductive parameters in migrating birds. Snowy owls Bubo scandiacus have multiple wintering tactics as they can use both terrestrial and marine resources during the...
Predation shapes communities through consumptive and non-consumptive effects, where in the latter prey respond to perceived predation risk through risk management strategies occurring at different spatial and temporal scales. The landscape of fear concept is useful to better understand how predation risk affects prey behavioral decisions and distri...
Conservation status and management priorities are often informed by population trends. Trend estimates can be derived from population surveys or models, but both methods are associated with sources of uncertainty. Many Arctic-breeding shorebirds are thought to be declining based on migration and/or overwintering population surveys, but data are lac...
Climatic impacts are especially pronounced in the Arctic, which as a region is warming twice as fast as the rest of the globe. Here, we investigate how mean climatic conditions and rates of climatic change impact parasitoid insect communities in 16 localities across the Arctic. We focus on parasitoids in a widespread habitat, Dryas heathlands, and...
Most birds incubate their eggs to allow embryo development. This behaviour limits the ability of adults to perform other activities. Hence, incubating adults trade‐off incubation and nest protection with foraging to meet their own needs. Parents can either cooperate to sustain this trade‐off or incubate alone. The main cause of reproductive failure...
Models incorporating seasonality are necessary to fully assess the impact of global warming on Arctic communities. Seasonal migrations are a key component of Arctic food webs that still elude current theories predicting a single community equilibrium. We develop a multi-season model of predator–prey dynamics using a hybrid dynamical systems framewo...
Lower vulnerability to predation should increase the capacity of prey populations to maintain positive population growth rate in regions characterized by high predation pressure. Some arctic-nesting shorebirds nest almost exclusively in areas where predation pressure is regularly released. The few species that can breed within the entire distributi...
Climate change has led to major shifts in the timing of biological events, with many studies demonstrating earlier phenology in response to warming. However, few of these studies have investigated the effects of climate change on the phenology of larvae in marine species. Phenological shifts can result in mismatches between consumers and prey, and...
Extratropical cyclones (ETCs) play a primary role in determining the variation in local weather and marine conditions in the mid-latitudes. ETCs have a broad range of intensities, from benign to extreme, and their paths, frequency, and intensity may change with global warming. However, how ETCs, and cyclones in general, currently affect marine wild...
Raptors are important environmental indicators because they are apex predators and can be sensitive to disturbance. Few studies have addressed habitat preferences of tundra-nesting raptors, and those that exist have focused on fine-scale characteristics. With increasing economic development predicted to occur throughout the Canadian Arctic, the inv...
Kubelka et al . (Reports, 9 November 2018, p. 680) claim that climate change has disrupted patterns of nest predation in shorebirds. They report that predation rates have increased since the 1950s, especially in the Arctic. We describe methodological problems with their analyses and argue that there is no solid statistical support for their claims.
Kubelka et al. (Science, 9 November 2018, p. 680-683) claim that climate change has disrupted patterns of nest predation in shorebirds. They report that predation rates have increased since the 1950s, especially in the Arctic. We describe methodological problems with their analyses and argue that there is no solid statistical support for their clai...
Ecological barriers such as oceans, mountain ranges or glaciers can have a substantial influence on the evolution of animal migration. Along the migration flyway connecting breeding sites in the North American Arctic and wintering grounds in Europe or Africa, Nearctic species are confronted with significant barriers such as the Atlantic Ocean and t...
Many biological quantities cannot be measured directly but rather need to be estimated from models. Estimates from models are statistical objects with variance and, when derived simultaneously, covariance. It is well known that their variance–covariance (VC) matrix must be considered in subsequent analyses. Although it is always preferable to carry...
To invest in energetically demanding life history stages, individuals require a substantial amount of resources. Physiological traits, particularly those related to energetics, can be useful for examining variation in life history decisions and trade‐offs because they result from individual responses to environmental variation. Leptin is a protein...
Ecological barriers such as oceans, mountain ranges or glaciers can have a substantial influence on the evolution of animal migration. Along the migration flyway connecting breeding sites in the North American Arctic and wintering grounds in Europe or Africa, Nearctic bird species are confronted with significant barriers such as the Atlantic Ocean...
Pollination is an ecosystem function of global importance. Yet, who visits the flower of specific plants, how the composition of these visitors varies in space and time, and how such variation translates into pollination services is hard to establish. The use of DNA barcodes allows us to address ecological patterns involving thousands of taxa that...
Indirect impacts of climate change, mediated by new species interactions (including pathogens or parasites) will likely be key drivers of biodiversity reorganization. In addition, direct effects of extreme weather events remain understudied. Simultaneous investigation of the significance of ectoparasites on host populations and extreme weather even...
1.A combination of timing of and body condition (i.e., mass) at arrival on the breeding grounds interact to influence the optimal combination of the timing of reproduction and clutch size in migratory species. This relationship has been formalized by Rowe et al. in a condition‐dependent individual optimization model (American Naturalist, 1994, 143,...
L'occurrence de ces deux espèces dans les stations d'inventaire était associée à la largeur des zones occupées par la Spartine alterniflore et par le haut marais (équations d'estimation généralisées (GEE), modèle autorégressif du premier ordre (AR1)). En raison des changements climatiques, l'érosion des marais salés risque d'être de plus en plus ma...
The warming climate is driving earlier spring snow melt and longer growing seasons in tundra regions of northwestern North America, thereby changing the timing of ecological processes. On Herschel Island, Yukon, Canada, we investigated changes in the migratory bird community, and the potential for phenological mismatch of egg hatching with the puls...
Migratory species can exploit many habitats over vast geographic areas and adopt various patterns of space and habitat use throughout their annual cycle. In nomadic species, determinants of habitat use during the non-breeding season are poorly known due to the unpredictability of their movement patterns. Here, we analysed variability in wintering s...
The existence of a dark morph in adult Long-tailed Jaeger (Stercorarius longicaudus) is still unclear and debated. For this species, dark plumages occur in juveniles and immatures, but no dark morph adults have yet been unequivocally confirmed. Ambiguous reports of presumed dark morph adults and lack of information on molt progression of immatures...
Detecting and planning for ecosystem changes from climate and land-use alteration is limited by uncertainty about the current distribution of many species. This is exacerbated in remote areas like the Arctic, where the impacts of climate change are the strongest and where industrial exploration and development are expanding. Using remotely-sensed e...
Seasonal declines in breeding performance are widespread in wild animals, resulting from temporal changes in environmental conditions or from individual variation. Seasonal declines might drive selection for early breeding, with implications for other stages of the annual cycle. Alternatively, selection on the phenology of nonbreeding stages could...
Monitoring rodent abundance is critical to understand direct and indirect trophic interactions inmost northern terrestrial ecosystems. However, logistic constraints can prevent researchers from using cap-ture–mark–recapture methods, a robust approach to estimate abundance. Our objective was to determinethe correlation between abundance estimates of...
Scientists, policy makers, and journalists are three key, interconnected players involved in prioritizing and implementing solutions to mitigate the consequences of anthropogenic pressures on the environment. The way in which information is framed and expertise is communicated by the media is crucial for political decisions and for the integrated m...
Determining how environmental conditions interact with individual intrinsic properties is important for unravelling the underlying mechanisms that drive variation in reproductive decisions among migratory species. We investigated the influence of sea ice conditions and body condition at arrival on the breeding propensity, i.e. the decision to repro...
Many Arctic shorebird populations are declining, and quantifying adult survival and the effects of anthropogenic factors is a crucial step toward a better understanding of population dynamics. We used a recently developed, spatially explicit Cormack-Jolly-Seber model in a Bayesian framework to obtain broad-scale estimates of true annual survival ra...
The Arctic is experiencing rapidly warming temperatures, increasing predator abundance, and diminishing population cycles of keystone species such as lemmings. However, it is still not known how many Arctic animals will respond to a changing climate with altered trophic interactions. We studied clutch size, incubation duration, and nest survival of...
Many species of migratory birds are currently suffering global declines and setting up effective conservation measures requires an understanding of their migratory connectivity. When migratory connectivity is low, individual from a particular breeding population spread over a shared area during the non-breeding season, mixing with individuals from...
Seasonal declines in breeding performance are widespread in wild animals, resulting from temporal changes in environmental conditions or from individual variation. Seasonal declines might drive selection for early breeding, with implications for other stages of the annual cycle. Alternatively, selection on the phenology of nonbreeding stages could...
Climate change can affect the distribution, abundance, and phenology of organisms globally. Variations in the timing of passage during autumn and spring migration can have consequences at individual and population levels. We assessed whether global climatic indexes and increasing air temperature over a 28 yr period were concurrent with shifts in th...