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Body shrinkage due to Arctic warming reduces red knot fitness in tropical wintering range

journal contribution
posted on 2016-05-13, 00:00 authored by J A Van Gils, Simeon LisovskiSimeon Lisovski, T Lok, W Meissner, A Ozarowska, J De Fouw, E Rakhimberdiev, M Y Soloviev, T Piersma, Marcel KlaassenMarcel Klaassen
Consequences conferred at a distance

Migratory animals have adapted to life in multiple, sometimes very different environments. Thus, they may show particularly complex responses as climates rapidly change. Van Gils
et al.
show that body size in red knot birds has been decreasing as their Arctic breeding ground warms (see the Perspective by Wikelski and Tertitski). However, the real toll of this change appears not in the rapidly changing northern part of their range but in the apparently more stable tropical wintering range. The resulting smaller, short-billed birds have difficulty reaching their major food source, deeply buried mollusks, which decreases the survival of birds born during particularly warm years.


Science
, this issue p.
819
; see also p.
775

History

Journal

Science

Volume

352

Issue

6287

Pagination

819 - 821

Publisher

AMER ASSOC ADVANCEMENT SCIENCE

Location

United States

ISSN

0036-8075

eISSN

1095-9203

Language

English

Publication classification

C Journal article; C1 Refereed article in a scholarly journal

Copyright notice

2016, American Association for the Advancement of Science