Temperature sensitivity of breeding phenology and reproductive output of the Common Redstart (Phoenicurus phoenicurus)

Abstract

Over the past four decades, rising temperatures have impacted the breeding phenology of many bird species, in some cases with consequences for their reproductive success. Migratory birds face particular challenges in shifting breeding phenology to track warmer springs, and understanding the impacts of rising spring temperatures on migratory birds' breeding is urgent. Here, we use over 4000 UK observations of Common Redstart nests, and spring temperature data from 1974 to 2020, to examine the effect of spring temperatures on laying date, clutch size and brood size. We use a sliding window approach to detect periods over which traits are most sensitive to temperature, and compare phenotypic responses to temperature over space and time with the aim of identifying causal effects of temperature and inferring the contributions of plasticity and local adaptation. We found that redstart laying date was sensitive to spring temperature from mid-April to late May, with a relatively shallow response of 1–2 days/°C that was similar across space and time, but shallower than the phenological response of many of the resource species. Over the study period, laying date has advanced by more than 11 days, which is substantially more than can be explained based on the temperature plasticity estimates we obtained. Spring temperature had a weak, but positive, impact on clutch size, but with no evidence of an effect of spatial variation in temperature. The rate of brood size reduction from hatching to fledging became more negative at higher temperatures, but after taking into account a non-significant but positive effect of temperature on brood size at hatching, there was no net effect of temperature on fledging success. Taken together, we found little evidence that higher temperatures in the UK lead to lower reproductive output.