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The impact of climate and cyclic food abundance on the timing of breeding and brood size in four boreal owl species

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Abstract

The ongoing climate change has improved our understanding of how climate affects the reproduction of animals. However, the interaction between food availability and climate on breeding has rarely been examined. While it has been shown that breeding of boreal birds of prey is first and foremost determined by prey abundance, little information exists on how climatic conditions influence this relationship. We studied the joint effects of main prey abundance and ambient weather on timing of breeding and reproductive success of two smaller (pygmy owl Glaucidium passerinum and Tengmalm’s owl Aegolius funereus) and two larger (tawny owl Strix aluco and Ural owl Strix uralensis) avian predator species using long-term nation-wide datasets during 1973–2004. We found no temporal trend either in vole abundance or in hatching date and brood size of any studied owl species. In the larger species, increasing late winter or early spring temperature advanced breeding at least as much as did high autumn abundance of prey (voles). Furthermore, increasing snow depth delayed breeding of the largest species (Ural owl), presumably by reducing the availability of voles. Brood size was strongly determined by spring vole abundance in all four owl species. These results show that climate directly affects the breeding performance of vole-eating boreal avian predators much more than previously thought. According to earlier studies, small-sized species should advance their breeding more than larger species in response to increasing temperature. However, we found an opposite pattern, with larger species being more sensitive to temperature. We argue that this pattern is caused by a difference in the breeding tactics of larger mostly capital breeding and smaller mostly income breeding owl species.

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Acknowledgments

Many voluntary bird ringers and observers have taken part in collecting the breeding and vole trapping data. The Ringing Centre of Finnish Museum of Natural History has maintained the electronic ringing databases since the 1970s and kindly helped with the data delivery. A large bulk of the long-term vole data have been collected in the national vole monitoring program by the Finnish Forest Research Institute; we thank Asko Kaikusalo for his help. We thank Nigel G. Yoccoz and an anonymous referee for their valuable comments. This work was supported by grants from Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation (to A.L.) and field work in Päijät-Häme was financed by the Academy of Finland (1985–1988 and 2000–2002).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Finnish Museum of Natural History, University of Helsinki, PO Box 17, 00014, Helsinki, Finland

    Aleksi Lehikoinen, Pertti Saurola & Jari Valkama

  2. Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Helsinki, PO Box 65, 00014, Helsinki, Finland

    Esa Ranta, Hannu Pietiäinen & Patrik Byholm

  3. Suonenjoki Research Unit, Finnish Forest Research Institute, Juntintie 154, 77600, Suonenjoki, Finland

    Otso Huitu

  4. Vantaa Research Unit, Finnish Forest Research Institute, PO Box 18, 01301, Vantaa, Finland

    Heikki Henttonen

  5. Section of Ecology, Department of Biology, University of Turku, 20014, Turku, Finland

    Erkki Korpimäki

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  1. Aleksi Lehikoinen
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  3. Hannu Pietiäinen
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Correspondence to Aleksi Lehikoinen.

Additional information

Communicated by Herwig Leirs.

Esa Ranta deceased during the preparation of the manuscript.

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Lehikoinen, A., Ranta, E., Pietiäinen, H. et al. The impact of climate and cyclic food abundance on the timing of breeding and brood size in four boreal owl species. Oecologia 165, 349–355 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-010-1730-1

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