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Population-Wide Failure to Breed in the Clark’s Nutcracker (Nucifraga columbiana)

In highly variable environments, conditions can be so stressful in some years that entire populations forgo reproduction in favor of higher likelihood of surviving to breed in future years. In two out of five years, Clark’s nutcrackers (Nucifraga Columbiana) in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem exhi...

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Autor principal: Schaming, Taza D.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2015
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4430254/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25970294
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0123917
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author Schaming, Taza D.
author_facet Schaming, Taza D.
author_sort Schaming, Taza D.
collection PubMed
description In highly variable environments, conditions can be so stressful in some years that entire populations forgo reproduction in favor of higher likelihood of surviving to breed in future years. In two out of five years, Clark’s nutcrackers (Nucifraga Columbiana) in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem exhibited population-wide failure to breed. Clark’s nutcrackers at the study site experienced substantial interannual differences in food availability and weather conditions, and the two nonbreeding years corresponded with low whitebark pine (Pinus albicaulis) cone crops the previous autumn (≤ an average of 8 ± 2 cones per tree versus ≥ an average of 20 ± 2 cones per tree during breeding years) and high snowpack in early spring (≥ 61.2 ± 5.5 cm versus ≤ 51.9 ± 4.4 cm during breeding years). The average adult body condition index during the breeding season was significantly lower in 2011 (-1.5 ± 1.1), a nonbreeding year, as compared to 2012 (6.2 ± 2.0), a breeding year. The environmental cues available to the birds prior to breeding, specifically availability of cached whitebark pine seeds, may have allowed them to predict that breeding conditions would be poor, leading to the decision to skip breeding. Alternatively, the Clark’s nutcrackers may have had such low body energy stores that they chose not to or were unable to breed. Breeding plasticity would allow Clark’s nutcrackers to exploit an unpredictable environment. However, if large-scale mortality of whitebark pines is leading to an increase in the number of nonbreeding years, there could be serious population-level and ecosystem-wide consequences.
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spelling pubmed-44302542015-05-21 Population-Wide Failure to Breed in the Clark’s Nutcracker (Nucifraga columbiana) Schaming, Taza D. PLoS One Research Article In highly variable environments, conditions can be so stressful in some years that entire populations forgo reproduction in favor of higher likelihood of surviving to breed in future years. In two out of five years, Clark’s nutcrackers (Nucifraga Columbiana) in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem exhibited population-wide failure to breed. Clark’s nutcrackers at the study site experienced substantial interannual differences in food availability and weather conditions, and the two nonbreeding years corresponded with low whitebark pine (Pinus albicaulis) cone crops the previous autumn (≤ an average of 8 ± 2 cones per tree versus ≥ an average of 20 ± 2 cones per tree during breeding years) and high snowpack in early spring (≥ 61.2 ± 5.5 cm versus ≤ 51.9 ± 4.4 cm during breeding years). The average adult body condition index during the breeding season was significantly lower in 2011 (-1.5 ± 1.1), a nonbreeding year, as compared to 2012 (6.2 ± 2.0), a breeding year. The environmental cues available to the birds prior to breeding, specifically availability of cached whitebark pine seeds, may have allowed them to predict that breeding conditions would be poor, leading to the decision to skip breeding. Alternatively, the Clark’s nutcrackers may have had such low body energy stores that they chose not to or were unable to breed. Breeding plasticity would allow Clark’s nutcrackers to exploit an unpredictable environment. However, if large-scale mortality of whitebark pines is leading to an increase in the number of nonbreeding years, there could be serious population-level and ecosystem-wide consequences. Public Library of Science 2015-05-13 /pmc/articles/PMC4430254/ /pubmed/25970294 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0123917 Text en © 2015 Taza D. Schaming http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Schaming, Taza D.
Population-Wide Failure to Breed in the Clark’s Nutcracker (Nucifraga columbiana)
title Population-Wide Failure to Breed in the Clark’s Nutcracker (Nucifraga columbiana)
title_full Population-Wide Failure to Breed in the Clark’s Nutcracker (Nucifraga columbiana)
title_fullStr Population-Wide Failure to Breed in the Clark’s Nutcracker (Nucifraga columbiana)
title_full_unstemmed Population-Wide Failure to Breed in the Clark’s Nutcracker (Nucifraga columbiana)
title_short Population-Wide Failure to Breed in the Clark’s Nutcracker (Nucifraga columbiana)
title_sort population-wide failure to breed in the clark’s nutcracker (nucifraga columbiana)
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4430254/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25970294
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0123917
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