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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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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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Public Library of Science
2015
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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. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-4430254 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2015 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
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 |
work_keys_str_mv | AT schamingtazad populationwidefailuretobreedintheclarksnutcrackernucifragacolumbiana |