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Parenting in a warming world: thermoregulatory responses to heat stress in an endangered seabird
The frequency of extreme weather events, including heat waves, is increasing with climate change. The thermoregulatory demands resulting from hotter weather can have catastrophic impacts on animals, leading to mass mortalities. Although less dramatic, animals also experience physiological costs belo...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Oxford University Press
2020
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6970236/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31976077 http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/conphys/coz109 |
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author | Cook, Timothée R Martin, Rowan Roberts, Jennifer Häkkinen, Henry Botha, Philna Meyer, Corlia Sparks, Emilee Underhill, Leslie G Ryan, Peter G Sherley, Richard B |
author_facet | Cook, Timothée R Martin, Rowan Roberts, Jennifer Häkkinen, Henry Botha, Philna Meyer, Corlia Sparks, Emilee Underhill, Leslie G Ryan, Peter G Sherley, Richard B |
author_sort | Cook, Timothée R |
collection | PubMed |
description | The frequency of extreme weather events, including heat waves, is increasing with climate change. The thermoregulatory demands resulting from hotter weather can have catastrophic impacts on animals, leading to mass mortalities. Although less dramatic, animals also experience physiological costs below, but approaching, critical temperature thresholds. These costs may be particularly constraining during reproduction, when parents must balance thermoregulation against breeding activities. Such challenges should be acute among seabirds, which often nest in locations exposed to high solar radiation and predation risk. The globally endangered bank cormorant Phalacrocorax neglectus breeds in southern Africa in the winter, giving little scope for poleward or phenological shifts in the face of increasing temperatures. Physiological studies of endangered species sensitive to human disturbance, like the bank cormorant, are challenging, because individuals cannot be captured for experimental research. Using a novel, non-invasive, videographic approach, we investigated the thermoregulatory responses of this seabird across a range of environmental temperatures at three nesting colonies. The time birds spent gular fluttering, a behaviour enhancing evaporative heat loss, increased with temperature. Crouching or standing birds spent considerably less time gular fluttering than birds sitting on nests (ca 30% less at 22°C), showing that postural adjustments mediate exposure to heat stress and enhance water conservation. Crouching or standing, however, increases the vulnerability of eggs and chicks to suboptimal temperatures and/or expose nest contents to predation, suggesting that parents may trade-off thermoregulatory demands against offspring survival. We modelled thermoregulatory responses under future climate scenarios and found that nest-bound bank cormorants will gular flutter almost continuously for several hours a day by 2100. The associated increase in water loss may lead to dehydration, forcing birds to prioritize survival over breeding, a trade-off that would ultimately deteriorate the conservation status of this species. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-6970236 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2020 |
publisher | Oxford University Press |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-69702362020-01-23 Parenting in a warming world: thermoregulatory responses to heat stress in an endangered seabird Cook, Timothée R Martin, Rowan Roberts, Jennifer Häkkinen, Henry Botha, Philna Meyer, Corlia Sparks, Emilee Underhill, Leslie G Ryan, Peter G Sherley, Richard B Conserv Physiol Research Article The frequency of extreme weather events, including heat waves, is increasing with climate change. The thermoregulatory demands resulting from hotter weather can have catastrophic impacts on animals, leading to mass mortalities. Although less dramatic, animals also experience physiological costs below, but approaching, critical temperature thresholds. These costs may be particularly constraining during reproduction, when parents must balance thermoregulation against breeding activities. Such challenges should be acute among seabirds, which often nest in locations exposed to high solar radiation and predation risk. The globally endangered bank cormorant Phalacrocorax neglectus breeds in southern Africa in the winter, giving little scope for poleward or phenological shifts in the face of increasing temperatures. Physiological studies of endangered species sensitive to human disturbance, like the bank cormorant, are challenging, because individuals cannot be captured for experimental research. Using a novel, non-invasive, videographic approach, we investigated the thermoregulatory responses of this seabird across a range of environmental temperatures at three nesting colonies. The time birds spent gular fluttering, a behaviour enhancing evaporative heat loss, increased with temperature. Crouching or standing birds spent considerably less time gular fluttering than birds sitting on nests (ca 30% less at 22°C), showing that postural adjustments mediate exposure to heat stress and enhance water conservation. Crouching or standing, however, increases the vulnerability of eggs and chicks to suboptimal temperatures and/or expose nest contents to predation, suggesting that parents may trade-off thermoregulatory demands against offspring survival. We modelled thermoregulatory responses under future climate scenarios and found that nest-bound bank cormorants will gular flutter almost continuously for several hours a day by 2100. The associated increase in water loss may lead to dehydration, forcing birds to prioritize survival over breeding, a trade-off that would ultimately deteriorate the conservation status of this species. Oxford University Press 2020-01-18 /pmc/articles/PMC6970236/ /pubmed/31976077 http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/conphys/coz109 Text en © The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press and the Society for Experimental Biology. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Cook, Timothée R Martin, Rowan Roberts, Jennifer Häkkinen, Henry Botha, Philna Meyer, Corlia Sparks, Emilee Underhill, Leslie G Ryan, Peter G Sherley, Richard B Parenting in a warming world: thermoregulatory responses to heat stress in an endangered seabird |
title | Parenting in a warming world: thermoregulatory responses to heat stress in an endangered seabird |
title_full | Parenting in a warming world: thermoregulatory responses to heat stress in an endangered seabird |
title_fullStr | Parenting in a warming world: thermoregulatory responses to heat stress in an endangered seabird |
title_full_unstemmed | Parenting in a warming world: thermoregulatory responses to heat stress in an endangered seabird |
title_short | Parenting in a warming world: thermoregulatory responses to heat stress in an endangered seabird |
title_sort | parenting in a warming world: thermoregulatory responses to heat stress in an endangered seabird |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6970236/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31976077 http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/conphys/coz109 |
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