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Long-term trends in the body condition of parents and offspring of Tengmalm’s owls under fluctuating food conditions and climate change

Physical condition is important for the ability to resist various parasites and diseases as well as in escaping predators thus contributing to reproductive success, over-winter survival and possible declines in wildlife populations. However, in-depth research on trends in body condition is rare beca...

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Autores principales: Kouba, Marek, Bartoš, Luděk, Bartošová, Jitka, Hongisto, Kari, Korpimäki, Erkki
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8460639/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34556766
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-98447-1
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author Kouba, Marek
Bartoš, Luděk
Bartošová, Jitka
Hongisto, Kari
Korpimäki, Erkki
author_facet Kouba, Marek
Bartoš, Luděk
Bartošová, Jitka
Hongisto, Kari
Korpimäki, Erkki
author_sort Kouba, Marek
collection PubMed
description Physical condition is important for the ability to resist various parasites and diseases as well as in escaping predators thus contributing to reproductive success, over-winter survival and possible declines in wildlife populations. However, in-depth research on trends in body condition is rare because decades-long datasets are not available for a majority of species. We analysed the long-term dataset of offspring covering 34 years, male parents (40 years) and female parents (42 years) to find out whether the decline of Tengmalm’s owl population in western Finland is attributable to either decreased adult and/or juvenile body condition in interaction with changing weather conditions and density estimates of main foods. We found that body condition of parent owl males and females declined throughout the 40-year study period whereas the body condition of owlets at the fledging stage very slightly increased. The body condition of parent owls increased with augmenting depth of snow cover in late winter (January to March), and that of offspring improved with increasing precipitation in late spring (May to June). We conclude that the decreasing trend of body condition of parent owl males and females is important factor probably inducing reduced adult survival and reduced reproduction success thus contributing to the long-term decline of the Tengmalm’s owl study population. The very slightly increasing trend of body condition of offspring is obviously not able to compensate the overall decline of Tengmalm’s owl population, because the number of offspring in turn simultaneously decreased considerably in the long-term. The ongoing climate change appeared to work in opposite ways in this case because declining depth of snow cover will make the situation worse but increased precipitation will improve. We suggest that the main reasons for long-term decline of body condition of parent owls are interactive or additive effects of reduced food resources and increased overall predation risk due to habitat degradation (loss and fragmentation of mature and old-growth forests due to clear-felling) subsequently leading to decline of Tengmalm’s owl study population.
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spelling pubmed-84606392021-09-27 Long-term trends in the body condition of parents and offspring of Tengmalm’s owls under fluctuating food conditions and climate change Kouba, Marek Bartoš, Luděk Bartošová, Jitka Hongisto, Kari Korpimäki, Erkki Sci Rep Article Physical condition is important for the ability to resist various parasites and diseases as well as in escaping predators thus contributing to reproductive success, over-winter survival and possible declines in wildlife populations. However, in-depth research on trends in body condition is rare because decades-long datasets are not available for a majority of species. We analysed the long-term dataset of offspring covering 34 years, male parents (40 years) and female parents (42 years) to find out whether the decline of Tengmalm’s owl population in western Finland is attributable to either decreased adult and/or juvenile body condition in interaction with changing weather conditions and density estimates of main foods. We found that body condition of parent owl males and females declined throughout the 40-year study period whereas the body condition of owlets at the fledging stage very slightly increased. The body condition of parent owls increased with augmenting depth of snow cover in late winter (January to March), and that of offspring improved with increasing precipitation in late spring (May to June). We conclude that the decreasing trend of body condition of parent owl males and females is important factor probably inducing reduced adult survival and reduced reproduction success thus contributing to the long-term decline of the Tengmalm’s owl study population. The very slightly increasing trend of body condition of offspring is obviously not able to compensate the overall decline of Tengmalm’s owl population, because the number of offspring in turn simultaneously decreased considerably in the long-term. The ongoing climate change appeared to work in opposite ways in this case because declining depth of snow cover will make the situation worse but increased precipitation will improve. We suggest that the main reasons for long-term decline of body condition of parent owls are interactive or additive effects of reduced food resources and increased overall predation risk due to habitat degradation (loss and fragmentation of mature and old-growth forests due to clear-felling) subsequently leading to decline of Tengmalm’s owl study population. Nature Publishing Group UK 2021-09-23 /pmc/articles/PMC8460639/ /pubmed/34556766 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-98447-1 Text en © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Article
Kouba, Marek
Bartoš, Luděk
Bartošová, Jitka
Hongisto, Kari
Korpimäki, Erkki
Long-term trends in the body condition of parents and offspring of Tengmalm’s owls under fluctuating food conditions and climate change
title Long-term trends in the body condition of parents and offspring of Tengmalm’s owls under fluctuating food conditions and climate change
title_full Long-term trends in the body condition of parents and offspring of Tengmalm’s owls under fluctuating food conditions and climate change
title_fullStr Long-term trends in the body condition of parents and offspring of Tengmalm’s owls under fluctuating food conditions and climate change
title_full_unstemmed Long-term trends in the body condition of parents and offspring of Tengmalm’s owls under fluctuating food conditions and climate change
title_short Long-term trends in the body condition of parents and offspring of Tengmalm’s owls under fluctuating food conditions and climate change
title_sort long-term trends in the body condition of parents and offspring of tengmalm’s owls under fluctuating food conditions and climate change
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8460639/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34556766
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-98447-1
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