Wildlife Conservation Research Unit, Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, The Recanati-Kaplan Centre, Tubney House, Tubney, Abingdon, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom.
PLoS One. 2013 Jul 11;8(7):e68116. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0068116. Print 2013.
Models capturing the full effects of weather conditions on animal populations are scarce. Here we decompose yearly temperature and rainfall into mean trends, yearly amplitude of change and residual variation, using daily records. We establish from multi-model inference procedures, based on 1125 life histories (from 1987 to 2008), that European badger (Meles meles) annual mortality and recruitment rates respond to changes in mean trends and to variability in proximate weather components. Variation in mean rainfall was by far the most influential predictor in our analysis. Juvenile survival and recruitment rates were highest at intermediate levels of mean rainfall, whereas low adult survival rates were associated with only the driest, and not the wettest, years. Both juvenile and adult survival rates also exhibited a range of tolerance for residual standard deviation around daily predicted temperature values, beyond which survival rates declined. Life-history parameters, annual routines and adaptive behavioural responses, which define the badgers' climatic niche, thus appear to be predicated upon a bounded range of climatic conditions, which support optimal survival and recruitment dynamics. That variability in weather conditions is influential, in combination with mean climatic trends, on the vital rates of a generalist, wide ranging and K-selected medium-sized carnivore, has major implications for evolutionary ecology and conservation.
捕捉天气条件对动物种群的全面影响的模型十分匮乏。在这里，我们使用每日记录将年度温度和降雨量分解为平均趋势、年度变化幅度和剩余变化。我们通过基于 1125 个生活史（1987 年至 2008 年）的多模型推断程序得出结论，即欧洲獾的年死亡率和补充率对平均趋势变化和临近天气成分的可变性有反应。在我们的分析中，降雨量的平均变化是最具影响力的预测因子。在中等降雨量水平下，幼仔的存活率和补充率最高，而只有最干旱的年份，而不是最潮湿的年份，与成年存活率低有关。幼仔和成年的存活率也表现出对每日预测温度值周围的剩余标准偏差的容忍范围，超过这个范围，存活率就会下降。定义獾气候生态位的生活史参数、年度常规和适应性行为反应似乎是基于一个有界限的气候条件范围，这支持了最佳的生存和补充动态。天气条件的可变性，加上平均气候趋势，对一般的、广泛分布的和 K 选择的中型肉食动物的重要生活率有重大影响，这对进化生态学和保护具有重大意义。
