Department of Fish, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado, USA.
College of Information and Computer Sciences, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Massachusetts, USA.
Glob Chang Biol. 2023 Mar;29(5):1407-1419. doi: 10.1111/gcb.16509. Epub 2022 Nov 17.
Organisms have been shifting their timing of life history events (phenology) in response to changes in the emergence of resources induced by climate change. Yet understanding these patterns at large scales and across long time series is often challenging. Here we used the US weather surveillance radar network to collect data on the timing of communal swallow and martin roosts and evaluate the scale of phenological shifts and its potential association with temperature. The discrete morning departures of these aggregated aerial insectivores from ground-based roosting locations are detected by radars around sunrise. For the first time, we applied a machine learning algorithm to automatically detect and track these large-scale behaviors. We used 21 years of data from 12 weather surveillance radar stations in the Great Lakes region to quantify the phenology in roosting behavior of aerial insectivores at three spatial levels: local roost cluster, radar station, and across the Great Lakes region. We show that their peak roosting activity timing has advanced by 2.26 days per decade at the regional scale. Similar signals of advancement were found at the station scale, but not at the local roost cluster scale. Air temperature trends in the Great Lakes region during the active roosting period were predictive of later stages of roosting phenology trends (75% and 90% passage dates). Our study represents one of the longest-term broad-scale phenology examinations of avian aerial insectivore species responding to environmental change and provides a stepping stone for examining potential phenological mismatches across trophic levels at broad spatial scales.
生物已经在通过改变资源出现的时间来响应气候变化引起的生活史事件(物候)的变化。然而,在大范围内和长时间序列中理解这些模式往往具有挑战性。在这里,我们使用美国天气监测雷达网络收集关于群居燕子和家燕栖息地时间的数据,并评估物候变化的规模及其与温度的潜在关联。这些聚集的空中食虫动物在日出前后从地面栖息地离散地清晨离开,被雷达探测到。我们首次应用机器学习算法来自动检测和跟踪这些大规模行为。我们使用来自五大湖地区 12 个天气监测雷达站的 21 年数据,在三个空间尺度上量化了空中食虫动物的栖息地行为的物候学:局部栖息地集群、雷达站和整个五大湖地区。我们表明,它们的高峰期栖息地活动时间在区域尺度上每十年提前了 2.26 天。在站尺度上也发现了类似的提前信号,但在局部栖息地集群尺度上没有。在活跃的栖息地期间五大湖地区的空气温度趋势预测了栖息地物候趋势的后期阶段(75%和 90%的通过日期)。我们的研究代表了对鸟类空中食虫动物物种响应环境变化的最长时间范围内的广泛物候学检查之一,并为在广泛的空间尺度上检查营养水平之间潜在的物候不匹配提供了一个垫脚石。