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Coupled dynamics of body mass and population growth in response to environmental change

Ozgul, Arpat
; 
Childs, Dylan Z.
; 
Oli, Madan K.
; 
Armitage, Kenneth B.
; 
Blumstein, Daniel T.
; 
Olson, Lucretia E.
; 
Tuljapurkar, Shripad
; 
Coulson, Tim
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Abstract
Environmental change has altered the phenology, morphological traits and population dynamics of many species1,2. However, the links underlying these joint responses remain largely unknown due to a paucity of long-term data and the lack of an appropriate analytical framework3. Here, we investigate the link between phenotypic and demographic responses to environmental change using a novel methodology and an exceptional long-term (1976–2008) dataset from a hibernating mammal (the yellow-bellied marmot) inhabiting a dynamic subalpine habitat. We demonstrate how earlier emergence from hibernation and earlier weaning of young has led to a longer growing season and larger body masses prior to hibernation. The resulting shift in both the phenotype and the relationship between phenotype and fitness components led to a decline in adult mortality, which in turn triggered an abrupt increase in population size in recent years. Direct and trait-mediated effects of environmental change had comparable contributions to the observed dramatic increase in population growth. Our results help explain how a shift in phenology can cause simultaneous phenotypic and demographic changes, and highlight the need for a theory integrating ecological and evolutionary dynamics in stochastic environments4,5.
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Date
2010-07-22
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Nature Publishing Group
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Ecology & Evolutionary Biology Scholarly Works
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Ozgul, A., Childs, D. Z., Oli, M. K., Armitage, K. B., Blumstein, D. T., Olson, L. E., … Coulson, T. (2010). Coupled dynamics of body mass and population growth in response to environmental change. Nature, 466(7305), 482–485. http://doi.org/10.1038/nature09210
URI
https://hdl.handle.net/1808/25903
DOI
10.1038/nature09210
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