On the way home to #Westray after a fab #BOU2023 and birding my way north through Scotland today and utterly chuffed to just chance upon this male Black Grouse in Perthshire. Can’t remember the last one I saw it’s been so long! Viewed and filmed from distance 😉
.@PeSumas presenting #URBICON (The URban BIrd CONsortium) at the #BOU2023 conference: with a call to phrase 100 key #research questions in #avian urban #ecology. Follow the link and become a contributing co-author...
Great talk from @Me_Lindner on the remarkable genomic selection experiment on great tit phenology based at @AnimalEcol_NIOO #bou2023
25/25 #BOU2023 #SESH1 All of this work has only been possible because of the skill & dedication of a great team of fieldworkers, students & postdocs who collect the backbone data of the @WythamTits project each year - and the many funders @ERC_Research @NERCscience @royalsociety
24/25 #BOU2023 #SESH1 If you're interested in such problems - get in touch: we are beginning a large-scale project in 2023 using drone-based mapping to estimate phenology at the level of individual trees across @WythamWoods
23/25 #BOU2023 #SESH1 A challenge for coming years is to expand our understanding of how organisms such as birds respond to phenology that varies across small and large scales, both in time and in space
22/25 #BOU2023 #SESH1 As well as the well-known change in mean spring temperature, we are seeing changes in the variance between years (i.e. successive years are more different than they used to be) as well as the frequency of "extreme climatic events"...
21/25 #BOU2023 #SESH1 In addition to the drivers of phenology varying over space, they may also vary over time. Specifically, we have often focussed on changes in the average conditions, but there may also be changes in the variance
20/25 #BOU2023 #SESH1 We're not sure what drives this variation in the rate of response (some areas advancing fast, others slow), though it was correlated with the extent of oak die-back which may suggest a food-related cause
19/25 #BOU2023 #SESH1 Spatial scale can be important over time as well. By analysing the trajectory of change of laying date relative to the population average over 60 years we (@EllaFCole @ce_regan) showed that this also varies at a small scale...
18/25 #BOU2023 #SESH1 In other words, for measures of fitness that we might expect to dependent on local processes, we see that birds on average match the best timing for their location - this suggests an important aspect of selection on phenology operates at small spatial scales
17/25 #BOU2023 #SESH1 Combining across all boxes (there are almost 500 boxes used 15 times or more) shows a general pattern for *local* measures of success to be maximised (in this case, probability of ≥ 1 fledgling) close to the average date for the box
16/25 #BOU2023 #SESH1 For example, illustrating this with one box (Broad Oak 71, occupied 21 times) we see that very early, or very late, breeding attempts at this site seem to do less well & that the peak in success is for birds a little later than the average
15/25 #BOU2023 #SESH1 Why does this fine-scale spatial matching occur? One possibility is that birds adjust timing to match the phenology of their local environment. We can use the long-term data to ask how important this matching is by splitting variation within & between sites
14/25 #BOU2023 #SESH1 Amy showed that the phenological landscape of oak tree bud burst was highly consistent across years and that caterpillar peak date matched individual trees - also that bird egg laying was best matched to local oak tree phenology...
13/25 #BOU2023 #SESH1 Amy Hinks studied the spatial match between the phenology of oak trees, birds & caterpillars for her DPhil @egioxford - she got to know individual trees very well! www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/681572
12/25 #BOU2023 #SESH1 If we plot the average laying date at the individual nestbox level, we can see lots of variation in the average timing, with some spatial structure
11/25 #BOU2023 #SESH1 While informative, such studies have their limitations, in that they don't consider the scale at which selection operates or at which organisms experience some parts of their environment
10/25 #BOU2023 #SESH1 Repeated observations of individuals in different environments show that the changes are accomplished by individual phenotypic plasticity - @AnneCharmantier et al https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1157174
9/25 #BOU2023 #SESH1 Both great tit and winter moth annual timing are quite strongly predicted by some simple climatic indices - indeed the same climatic index. Hence, they have remained synchronised over time
8/25 #BOU2023 #SESH1 Over time we've seen clear increases in early spring temperature as well as changes in the population average egg laying date (work by @AnneCharmantier @EllaFCole @ce_regan)...
7/25 #BOU2023 #SESH1 This is a fascinating system to study because annual variability creates a moving target for both herbivores feeding on the leaves of trees and for their predators - i.e. great tits in this example
6/25 #BOU2023 #SESH1 We view much of the variation in phenology between years as being driven by selection and associated mechanisms to enable predators to synchronise with their food supply
5/25 #BOU2023 #SESH1 Simply plotting the annual distribution of first egg dates for @WythamTits illustrates how much variability there is in this phenological phenotype over time - figure by @cjonesyyyy
4/25 #BOU2023 #SESH1 The study has just entered its 76th year of data collection - this infographic was prepared last year by @_AnettKiss_ to celebrate the 75th birthday of @WythamTits in @WythamWoods
3/25 #BOU2023 #SESH1 In this talk I will explore what insights we can gain from thinking about different temporal and spatial scales when understanding phenological responses in birds - in the context of the Wytham Great Tit study which David Lack began in 1947
2/25 #BOU2023 #SESH1 Although we understand quite a lot about how populations respond to long-term climate change with changes in phenology, we understand much less about these changes over smaller spatial and temporal scales - those over which selection acts
1/25 #BOU2023 #SESH1 “Multiple lines of evidence make it very likely that many observed changes in … phenology… can be attributed to regional and global climate changes”… very high confidence in attributing to changing climate across >4000 species – 6th IPCC report - 2022
Not in Nottingham for #BOU2023? Doesn’t matter! You can follow every talk, poster and some Twitter-only presentations on here by following on the #BOU2023 tag. Full programme at
bou.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/... | #ornithology
@IBIS_journal’s #BOU2023 evolutionary ecology of birds conference is opened by BOU President @juliet_vickery introducing Prof Jane Reid to deliver the 2023 #AlfredNewtonLecture
#ornithology
