Waiting for the snow to melt…
Seasonal environmental conditions shape the behavior and life history of virtually all organisms. Climate change is modifying these seasonal environmental conditions, which threatens to disrupt population dynamics. It is conceivable that climatic changes may be beneficial in one season but result in detrimental conditions in another because life-history strategies vary between these time periods. We analyzed the temporal trends in seasonal survival of yellow-bellied marmots ( Marmota flaviventer ) and explored the environmental drivers using a 40-y dataset from the Colorado Rocky Mountains (USA). Trends in survival revealed divergent seasonal patterns, which were similar across age-classes. Marmot survival declined during winter but generally increased during summer. Interestingly, different environmental factors appeared to drive survival trends across age-classes. Winter survival was largely driven by conditions during the preceding summer and the effect of continued climate change was likely to be mainly negative, whereas the likely outcome of continued climate change on summer survival was generally positive. This study illustrates that seasonal demographic responses need disentangling to accurately forecast the impacts of climate change on animal population dynamics. We were able to impute body mass for each individual twice during each year following their first capture using a similar approach to Ozgul et al. (2010) (for more details on the modeling procedure see SI Appendix within the main paper). Body mass measurements were log-transformed.
Knowledge graph centered on Marmot capture history data and growing season len with 16 nodes and 84 connections. Top connected: Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory, Marmota, Yellow-bellied Marmot, Colorado East River Valley, Daniel T. Blumstein.
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