| Title: | Timing outweighs magnitude of rainfall in shaping population dynamics of a small mammal species in steppe grassland |
| Author(s): | Li G; Wan X; Yin B; Wei W; Hou X; Zhang X; Batsuren E; Zhao J; Huang S; Xu X; Liu J; Song Y; Ozgul A; Dickman CR; Wang G; Krebs CJ; Zhang Z; |
| Address: | "State Key Laboratory of Integrated Management of Pest Insects and Rodents, Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China. Chinese Academy of Sciences Center for Excellence in Biotic Interactions, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China. Colleges of Bioscience and Biotechnology, Yangzhou University, Yangzhou 225009, China. Department of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies, University of Zurich 8057 Zurich, Switzerland. School of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Sydney, Camperdown, NSW 2006, Australia. Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Aquaculture, Mississippi State University, Starkville, MS 39762. Department of Zoology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z4, Canada. State Key Laboratory of Integrated Management of Pest Insects and Rodents, Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China; zhangzb@ioz.ac.cn" |
| ISSN/ISBN: | 1091-6490 (Electronic) 0027-8424 (Print) 0027-8424 (Linking) |
| Abstract: | "Climate change-induced shifts in species phenology differ widely across trophic levels, which may lead to consumer-resource mismatches with cascading population and ecosystem consequences. Here, we examined the effects of different rainfall patterns (i.e., timing and amount) on the phenological asynchrony of population of a generalist herbivore and their food sources in semiarid steppe grassland in Inner Mongolia. We conducted a 10-y (2010 to 2019) rainfall manipulation experiment in 12 0.48-ha field enclosures and found that moderate rainfall increases during the early rather than late growing season advanced the timing of peak reproduction and drove marked increases in population size through increasing the biomass of preferred plant species. By contrast, greatly increased rainfall produced no further increases in vole population growth due to the potential negative effect of the flooding of burrows. The increases in vole population size were more coupled with increased reproduction of overwintered voles and increased body mass of young-of-year than with better survival. Our results provide experimental evidence for the fitness consequences of phenological mismatches at the population level and highlight the importance of rainfall timing on the population dynamics of small herbivores in the steppe grassland environment" |
| Keywords: | Animals Arvicolinae/classification/*growth & development/physiology Biomass China Climate Change Feeding Behavior *Grassland Population Dynamics Probability *Rain Reproduction Survival Analysis climate variability consumer-resource dynamics phenology mism; |
| Notes: | "MedlineLi, Guoliang Wan, Xinrong Yin, Baofa Wei, Wanhong Hou, Xianglei Zhang, Xin Batsuren, Erdenetuya Zhao, Jidong Huang, Shuli Xu, Xiaoming Liu, Jing Song, Yiran Ozgul, Arpat Dickman, Christopher R Wang, Guiming Krebs, Charles J Zhang, Zhibin eng Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't 2021/10/16 Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2021 Oct 19; 118(42):e2023691118. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2023691118" |
