Large-scale climatic anomalies affect marine predator foraging behaviour and demography.
Determining the links between the behavioural and population responses of wild species to environmental variations is critical for understanding the impact of climate variability on ecosystems. Using long-term data sets, we show how large-scale climatic anomalies in the Southern Hemisphere affect the foraging behaviour and population dynamics of a key marine predator, the king penguin. When large-scale subtropical dipole events occur simultaneously in both subtropical Southern Indian and Atlantic Oceans, they generate tropical anomalies that shift the foraging zone southward. Consequently the distances that penguins foraged from the colony and their feeding depths increased and the population size decreased. This represents an example of a robust and fast impact of large-scale climatic anomalies affecting a marine predator through changes in its at-sea behaviour and demography, despite lack of information on prey availability. Our results highlight a possible behavioural mechanism through which climate variability may affect population processes.
Centre d'Etudes Biologiques de Chizé, CEBC- UMR 7372 CNRS, Villiers en Bois 79360, France.|Institut Pluridisciplinaire Hubert Curien, Université de Strasbourg, UMR 7178 CNRS, 23 rue Becquerel 67087 Strasbourg, France.
Charles A
CA
Bost
Sorbonne Universités (UPMC, Univ Paris 06)-CNRS-IRD-MNHN, LOCEAN, 4 place Jussieu, Paris F-75005, France.
Cedric
C
Cotté
Sorbonne Universités (UPMC, Univ Paris 06)-CNRS-IRD-MNHN, LOCEAN, 4 place Jussieu, Paris F-75005, France.
Pascal
P
Terray
Centre d'Etudes Biologiques de Chizé, CEBC- UMR 7372 CNRS, Villiers en Bois 79360, France.
Christophe
C
Barbraud
Centre d'Etudes Biologiques de Chizé, CEBC- UMR 7372 CNRS, Villiers en Bois 79360, France.
Cécile
C
Bon
Centre d'Etudes Biologiques de Chizé, CEBC- UMR 7372 CNRS, Villiers en Bois 79360, France.
Karine
K
Delord
Centre d'Ecologie Fonctionnelle et Evolutive/CNRS, UMR 5175, 1919 Route de Mende, Montpellier 34293, France.
Olivier
O
Gimenez
Institut Pluridisciplinaire Hubert Curien, Université de Strasbourg, UMR 7178 CNRS, 23 rue Becquerel 67087 Strasbourg, France.
Yves
Y
Handrich
National Institute of Polar Research, 10-3 Midori-cho, Tachikawa, Tokyo 190-8518, Japan.
Yasuhiko
Y
Naito
Centre d'Etudes Biologiques de Chizé, CEBC- UMR 7372 CNRS, Villiers en Bois 79360, France.
Christophe
C
Guinet
Centre d'Etudes Biologiques de Chizé, CEBC- UMR 7372 CNRS, Villiers en Bois 79360, France.
Henri
H
Weimerskirch
D000818:Animals; D001267:Atlantic Ocean; D057231:Climate Change; D017753:Ecosystem; D005247:Feeding Behavior; D005260:Female; D019156:Indian Ocean; D008297:Male; D011157:Population Dynamics; D011235:Predatory Behavior; D012621:Seasons; D046429:Spheniscidae / Q000502:physiology*