Cues and the optimal timing of activities under environmental changes

Organisms time activities by using environmental cues to forecast the future availability of important resources. Presently, there is limited understanding of the relationships between cues and optimal timing, and especially about how this relationship will be affected by environmental changes. We develop a general model to explore the relation between a cue and the optimal timing of an important life history activity. The model quantifies the fitness loss for organisms failing to time behaviours optimally. We decompose the immediate change in fitness resulting from environmental changes into a component that is due to changes in the predictive power of the cue and a component that derives from the mismatch of the old response to the cue to the new environmental conditions. Our results show that consequences may range from negative, neutral to positive and are highly dependent on how cue and optimal timing and their relation are specifically affected by environmental changes.

[1]  Christian Körner,et al.  Phenology Under Global Warming , 2010, Science.

[2]  K. Doherty,et al.  Proximate Cues for a Short-Distance Migratory Species: an Application of Survival Analysis , 2008 .

[3]  C. Both,et al.  Climatic effects on timing of spring migration and breeding in a long‐distance migrant, the pied flycatcher Ficedula hypoleuca , 2005 .

[4]  Kees van Oers,et al.  Phenology, seasonal timing and circannual rhythms: towards a unified framework , 2010, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

[5]  B. Goldman,et al.  Circannual rhythms and photoperiodism , 2003 .

[6]  R. Primack,et al.  Favorable Climate Change Response Explains Non-Native Species' Success in Thoreau's Woods , 2010, PloS one.

[7]  M. Visser,et al.  Temperature has a causal effect on avian timing of reproduction , 2009, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

[8]  Thomas H. Kunz,et al.  Changes in body mass and fat reserves in pre-hibernating little brown bats (Myotis lucifugus) , 1998 .

[9]  J. Madsen,et al.  Assessing body condition and energy budget components by scoring abdominal profiles in free‐ranging pink‐footed geese Anser brachyrhynchus , 2006 .

[10]  Seppo Rytkönen,et al.  Warming climate advances breeding and improves synchrony of food demand and food availability in a boreal passerine , 2011 .

[11]  C. Knechtel,et al.  Ecological Cues, Gestation Length, and Birth Timing in African Buffalo (syncerus Caffer) , 2007 .

[12]  Toke Thomas Høye,et al.  The effects of phenological mismatches on demography , 2010, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

[13]  T. Clutton‐Brock,et al.  Trophic level asynchrony in rates of phenological change for marine, freshwater and terrestrial environments , 2010 .

[14]  Colin E. Studds,et al.  Rainfall-induced changes in food availability modify the spring departure programme of a migratory bird , 2011, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

[15]  J. Giske,et al.  Cues and decision rules in animal migration , 2011 .

[16]  A. Møller.  Climate change and micro-geographic variation in laying date , 2008, Oecologia.

[17]  Anders Pape Møller,et al.  Populations of migratory bird species that did not show a phenological response to climate change are declining , 2008, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[18]  Maria Romano,et al.  Climate warming, ecological mismatch at arrival and population decline in migratory birds , 2011, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

[19]  S. Jackson.  Plant responses to photoperiod. , 2009, The New phytologist.

[20]  P. Sherman,et al.  Ecological and evolutionary traps. , 2002 .

[21]  J. Levine,et al.  Rainfall effects on rare annual plants , 2008 .

[22]  G. Gauthier,et al.  Reproductive consequences of egg‐laying decisions in snow geese , 2000 .

[23]  S. Bearhop,et al.  Carry-over effects as drivers of fitness differences in animals. , 2011, The Journal of animal ecology.

[24]  T. Jones,et al.  The phenology mismatch hypothesis: are declines of migrant birds linked to uneven global climate change? , 2010, The Journal of animal ecology.

[25]  I. Newton.  Weather-related mass-mortality events in migrants , 2007 .

[26]  Lia Hemerik,et al.  A new statistical tool to predict phenology under climate change scenarios , 2005 .

[27]  R. Drent.  The timing of birds' breeding seasons : the Perrins hypothesis revisited especially for migrants , 2006 .

[28]  J. Vonesh,et al.  Opposite shifts in size at metamorphosis in response to larval and metamorph predators. , 2006, Ecology.

[29]  Matthew L. Keefer,et al.  Variability in migration timing of adult Pacific lamprey (Lampetra tridentata) in the Columbia River, U.S.A. , 2009, Environmental Biology of Fishes.

[30]  J. Pöyry,et al.  Environmental controls on the phenology of moths: predicting plasticity and constraint under climate change , 2010, Oecologia.

[31]  Silke Bauer,et al.  The relevance of environmental conditions for departure decision changes en route in migrating geese. , 2008, Ecology.

[32]  R. Relyea.  Getting out alive: how predators affect the decision to metamorphose , 2007, Oecologia.

[33]  A. Miller‐Rushing,et al.  Toward a synthetic understanding of the role of phenology in ecology and evolution , 2010, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

[34]  P. Baker,et al.  Deciduousness in a seasonal tropical forest in western Thailand: interannual and intraspecific variation in timing, duration and environmental cues , 2008, Oecologia.

[35]  W. Bradshaw,et al.  Evolution of Animal Photoperiodism , 2007 .

[36]  G. Coupland,et al.  Time measurement and the control of flowering in plants. , 2000, BioEssays : news and reviews in molecular, cellular and developmental biology.

[37]  A. Hoffmann,et al.  Climate change and evolutionary adaptation , 2011, Nature.

[38]  B. Shipley,et al.  Context-Dependent Changes in the Weighting of Environmental Cues that Initiate Breeding in a Temperate Passerine, the Corsican Blue Tit (Cyanistes caeruleus) , 2010 .

[39]  J. Wiens,et al.  EVOLUTION OF ADAPTIVE PLASTICITY: RISK‐SENSITIVE HATCHING IN NEOTROPICAL LEAF‐BREEDING TREEFROGS , 2008 .

[40]  B. Peckarsky,et al.  Emergence cues of a mayfly in a high-altitude stream ecosystem: potential response to climate change. , 2006, Ecological applications : a publication of the Ecological Society of America.

[41]  S. Bauer,et al.  Modelling behavioural and fitness consequences of disturbance for geese along their spring flyway , 2005 .

[42]  W. Sutherland,et al.  Population-scale drivers of individual arrival times in migratory birds. , 2006, The Journal of animal ecology.

[43]  J. Hill,et al.  Role of larval host plants in the climate-driven range expansion of the butterfly Polygonia c-album. , 2007, The Journal of animal ecology.

[44]  M. C. Ferrari,et al.  Evolution and behavioural responses to human-induced rapid environmental change , 2011, Evolutionary applications.

[45]  N. Battey,et al.  Temperate flowering phenology. , 2010, Journal of experimental botany.

[46]  J. Woodley,et al.  Timing of reproduction in Montastraea annularis: relationship to environmental variables , 2002 .

[47]  J. Hamel,et al.  Long-term study of gamete release in a broadcast-spawning holothurian: predictable lunar and diel periodicities , 2007 .

[48]  R. Müller,et al.  RISK‐INDUCED EARLY HATCHING IN SALMONIDS , 2005 .

[49]  R. Pachauri.  Climate change 2007. Synthesis report. Contribution of Working Groups I, II and III to the fourth assessment report , 2008 .

[50]  John F. McLaughlin,et al.  Climate change hastens population extinctions , 2002, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.