Effects of spring conditions on breeding propensity of Greater Snow Goose females

By E. Reed, G. Gauthier, J. Giroux. Animal Biodiversity and Conservation, 2004

103 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Breeding propensity, defined as the probability that a sexually mature adult will breed in a given year, is an important determinant of annual productivity. It is also one of the least known demographic parameters in vertebrates. We studied the relationship between breeding propensity and conditions on spring staging areas (a spring conservation hunt) and the breeding grounds (spring snow cover) in Greater Snow Geese (Chen caerulescens atlantica), a long distance migrant that breeds in the High Arctic. We combined information from mark–recapture, telemetry, and nest survey data to estimate breeding propensity over a 7–year period. True temporal variation in breeding propensity was considerable (mean: 0.574 [95 % CI considering only process variation: 0.13 to 1.0]). Spring snow cover was negatively related to breeding propensity (bsnow=-2.05 ± 0.96 SE) and tended to be reduced in years with a spring hunt (b = -0.78 ± 0.35). Nest densities on the breeding colony and fall ratios of young:adults were good indices of annual variation in breeding propensity, with nest densities being slightly more precise. These results suggest that conditions encountered during the pre-breeding period can have a significant impact on productivity of Arctic-nesting birds

Subfields: Ecology, Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/9891503b53915d82cae3f0e4eb5ff39d3a30d07d

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Citations in the corpus

Travelling to breed (2006, background): “Support for this emphasis on the spring sites, even though they may be used for only a few days each season, as ‘weak links’ in the migratory chain was forthcoming from the ongoing studies on the deleterious impact of disturbance at spring stopovers in arcticnesting geese (the Svalbard population of”
Integrating Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Ecological Science: a Question of Scale (2009, background): “The number of geese summering on Bylot Island is thought to be influenced by breeding success, which in turn may be strongly influenced by spring climatic conditions (Reed et al. 2004) and predation pressure (Bêty et al. 2002).”
Effects of snow cover on the timing and success of reproduction in high-Arctic pink-footed geese Anser brachyrhynchus (2007, background): “Similar relationships have been found in North American greater snow geese (Anser caerulescens atlanticus) (Reed et al. 2004).”
Climate, trophic interactions, density dependence and carry‐over effects on the population productivity of a migratory Arctic herbivorous bird (2010, background): “Spring climatic conditions, for instance, are considered a major factor aff ecting goose breeding propensity, an important determinant of annual productivity (Reed et al. 2004, Dickey et al. 2008).”
Climatic effects on the breeding phenology and reproductive success of an arctic‐nesting goose species (2008, background): “As high spring temperatures and low snow cover are associated with a high breeding effort (this study; Reed et al., 2004), such conditions should lead to high brood density during the summer.”