Key Laboratory for Biodiversity Science and Ecological Engineering, College of Life Sciences, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China.
Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.
J Anim Ecol. 2022 May;91(5):983-995. doi: 10.1111/1365-2656.13686. Epub 2022 Mar 23.
Populations can rapidly respond to environmental change via adaptive phenotypic plasticity, which can also modify interactions between individuals and their environment, affecting population dynamics. Bird migration is a highly plastic resource-tracking tactic in seasonal environments. However, the link between the population dynamics of migratory birds and migration tactic plasticity is not well-understood. The quality of staging habitats affects individuals' migration timing and energy budgets in the course of migration and can consequently affect individuals' breeding and overwintering performance, and impact population dynamics. Given staging habitats being lost in many parts of the world, our goal is to investigate responses of individual migration tactics and population dynamics in the face of loss of staging habitat and to identify the key processes connecting them. We started by constructing and analysing a general full-annual-cycle individual-based model with a stylized migratory population to generate hypotheses on how changes in the size of staging habitat might drive changes in individual stopover duration and population dynamics. Next, through the interrogation of survey data, we tested these hypotheses by analysing population trends and stopover duration of migratory waterbirds experiencing the loss of staging habitat. Our modelling exercise led to us posing the following hypotheses: the loss of staging habitat generates plasticity in migration tactics, with individuals remaining on the staging habitat for longer to obtain food due to a reduction in per capita food availability. The subsequent increasing population density on the staging habitat has knock-on effects on population dynamics in the breeding and overwintering stage. Our empirical results were consistent with the modelling predictions. Our results demonstrate how environmental change that impacts one energetically costly life-history stage in migratory birds can have population dynamic impacts across the entire annual cycle via phenotypic plasticity.
种群可以通过适应性表型可塑性快速响应环境变化，这也可以改变个体与其环境之间的相互作用，从而影响种群动态。鸟类迁徙是季节性环境中一种高度灵活的资源追踪策略。然而，候鸟种群动态与迁徙策略可塑性之间的联系还没有得到很好的理解。中途停留栖息地的质量会影响个体在迁徙过程中的迁徙时间和能量预算，从而影响个体的繁殖和越冬表现，并影响种群动态。由于世界上许多地方的中途停留栖息地都在消失，我们的目标是研究在中途停留栖息地丧失的情况下，个体迁徙策略和种群动态的反应，并确定它们之间的关键过程。我们首先构建并分析了一个具有标准化迁徙种群的全年度个体基础模型，以生成关于中途停留栖息地大小变化如何驱动个体中途停留时间和种群动态变化的假设。接下来，通过对调查数据的询问，我们通过分析经历中途停留栖息地丧失的迁徙水鸟的种群趋势和中途停留时间来检验这些假设。我们的模型研究导致我们提出了以下假设：中途停留栖息地的丧失会产生迁徙策略的可塑性，由于人均食物供应减少，个体在中途停留栖息地停留的时间更长，以获取食物。随后，在中途停留栖息地的种群密度增加会对繁殖和越冬阶段的种群动态产生连锁反应。我们的实证结果与模型预测一致。我们的研究结果表明，影响候鸟一个高能耗生活史阶段的环境变化如何通过表型可塑性对整个年度周期的种群动态产生影响。
