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Breeding stage and tissue isotopic consistency suggests colony-level flexibility in niche breadth of an Arctic marine bird

  • Global change ecology – original research
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Abstract

Organisms must overcome environmental limitations to optimize their investment in life history stages to maximize fitness. Human-induced climate change is generating increasingly variable environmental conditions, impacting the demography of prey items and, therefore, the ability of consumers to successfully access resources to fuel reproduction. While climate change effects are especially pronounced in the Arctic, it is unknown whether organisms can adjust foraging decisions to match such changes. We used a 9-year blood plasma δ13C and δ15N data set from over 700 pre-breeding Arctic common eiders (Somateria mollissima) to assess breeding-stage and inter-annual variation in isotopic niche, and whether inferred trophic flexibility was related to colony-level breeding parameters and environmental variation. Eider blood isotope values varied both across years and breeding stages, and combined with only weak relationships between isotopic metrics and environmental conditions suggests that pre-breeding eiders can make flexible foraging decisions to overcome constraints imposed by local abiotic conditions. From an investment perspective, an inshore, smaller isotopic niche predicted a greater probability to invest in reproduction, but was not related to laying phenology. Proximately, our results provide evidence that eiders breeding in the Arctic can alter their diet at the onset of reproductive investment to overcome increases in the energetic demand of egg production. Ultimately, Arctic pre-breeding common eiders may have the stage- and year-related foraging flexibility to respond to abiotic variation to reproduce successfully.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the 2010–2018 East Bay Island field crews for data collection, and I. Butler and R. Kelly for data management. We also thank the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, Environment and Climate Change Canada, Canada Research Chairs Program, Northern Scientific Training Program, the Nunavut Wildlife Management Board, Polar Knowledge Canada, the Polar Continental Shelf Program, Oceans North, and the ArcticNet Canadian Network of Centres of Excellence for financial support. Animal care approval for this project was granted through both the University of Windsor Committee for Animal Care (AUPP #11-06 and #19-06; Reproductive Strategies of Arctic-Breeding Common Eiders) and ECCC Animal Care (EC-PN-15-026).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Integrative Biology, University of Windsor, Windsor, ON, Canada

    Kyle J. L. Parkinson, Nigel E. Hussey & Oliver P. Love

  2. Environment and Climate Change Canada, National Wildlife Research Centre, Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, Canada

    Holly L. Hennin & H. Grant Gilchrist

  3. Department of Biology, University of Western Ontario, London, ON, Canada

    Keith A. Hobson

  4. Environment and Climate Change Canada, Saskatoon, SK, Canada

    Keith A. Hobson

  5. Department of Integrative Biology, University of Guelph, 50 Stone Road East, Guelph, ON, N1H 2W1, Canada

    Kyle J. L. Parkinson

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  1. Kyle J. L. Parkinson
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KJLP, HLH, HGG, and OPL: conceived the research ideas and collected the data. KJLP, KAH, and NEH: prepared and analyzed the samples. KJLP, HLH, KAH, and OPL: analyzed the data. KJLP, HLH, and OPL: wrote the manuscript. All authors contributed to editing the manuscript. HGG and OPL: provided funding for the research.

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Correspondence to Kyle J. L. Parkinson.

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Communicated by Christian Voigt.

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Parkinson, K.J.L., Hennin, H.L., Gilchrist, H.G. et al. Breeding stage and tissue isotopic consistency suggests colony-level flexibility in niche breadth of an Arctic marine bird. Oecologia 200, 503–514 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-022-05267-9

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