Meeting Abstract
Climate change may limit the ability of individuals to reproduce successfully, with downstream impacts on population demography. Polar species are now faced with rates of warming much higher relative to other ecosystems, potentially placing them at even greater risk than previously expected. Unfortunately, it is unclear whether mechanisms at the heart of key reproductive decisions have the inherent flexibility that will enable individuals (and hence populations) to stay ahead of this rapid change. In waterfowl, ambient temperature can influence a mother’s incubation behavior, which in turn can affect the post-hatch success of offspring. Here we test links between environmental variation and incubation parameters in Arctic-breeding common eiders, a species which faces multiple constraints during incubation. Females live in a highly stochastic environment, fast during the entirety of incubation, and yet must control the incubation period carefully so that duckling hatching matches the timing of sea ice break-up. From 2014-2016, we collected local climate data (i.e., ambient temperature, humidity, etc.) and paired this with data loggers to monitor the incubation temperatures of eider hens at East Bay Island, Nunavut, Canada. We aim to relate inter- and intra-individual variability in incubation temperatures to environmental parameters to examine whether and when hens adjust incubation decisions and their body temperature in response to fluctuating ambient temperatures. Determining the capacity of individuals to flexibly adjust reproductive decisions in response to changing environmental conditions further allows us to predict whether certain populations (and hence a given species) have the capacity to persist in response to climate change.
