Abstract
A fundamental endeavor in population ecology is to identify the drivers of population dynamics. A few empirical studies included the effect of prey abundance when investigating simultaneously the effects of density-dependence and climate factors on marine top-predator population dynamics. Our aim was to unravel the mechanisms forcing population dynamics of an apex consumer seabird, the south polar skua, using long-term climatic and population time series of the consumer and its prey in Terre Adélie, Antarctica. Influences of density-dependence, climatic factors, and prey abundance with lag effects were tested on the breeding population dynamics with a Bayesian multi-model inference approach. We evidenced a negative trend in breeding population growth rate when density increased. Lagged effects of sea-ice concentration and air temperature in spring and a contemporary effect of prey resources were supported. Remarkably, results outline a reverse response of the south polar skua and one of its main preys to the same environmental factor (sea-ice concentration), suggesting a strong link between skua and penguin dynamics. The causal mechanisms may involve competition for food and space through territorial behavior as well as local climate and prey availability, which probably operate on breeding parameters (breeding propensity, breeding success, or recruitment) rather than on adult survival. Our results provide new insights on the relative importance of factors forcing the population dynamics of an apex consumer including density-dependence, local climate conditions, and direct and indirect effects of prey abundance.
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Data accessibility and code
Breeding population time series, covariates data are available in ESM Appendix 5 and code of models (random walk, exponential, delayed density-dependence, and the final model) are available in ESM Appendix 6.
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Acknowledgements
We thank all the field workers involved in Terre Adélie for collecting the population data on south polar skuas and penguins. These long-term demographic studies were supported by the French Polar Institute IPEV (program 109, resp. H. Weimerskirch), Terres Australes et Antarctiques Françaises and Zone Atelier Antarctique et Subantarctique (CNRS-INEE). We thank D. Besson for the help in the data management. We thank three anonymous reviewers for their comments that helped improving a previous version of the manuscript.
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CB and NP designed and coordinated the research. Data management and quality check were performed by KD and NP. Analyses were performed by NP with the support of MA and CB. NP, MA, KD, and CB wrote the manuscript
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Communicated by Nicolas Lecomte.
Lacking are studies disentangling simultaneously density-dependence, climate, and prey effects on marine top-predator populations. We provide a significant insight, with a broad scope relevant to many superior vertebrates, of the mechanisms forcing population dynamics with the analysis of high-quality long-term time series of a seabird top population and its prey together with climatic covariates.
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Pacoureau, N., Authier, M., Delord, K. et al. Population response of an apex Antarctic consumer to its prey and climate fluctuations. Oecologia 189, 279–291 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-018-4249-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-018-4249-5