Spatiotemporal and weather effects on the reproductive success of piping plovers on Prince Edward Island, Canada.

ABSTRACT: Piping plovers (Charadrius melodus sp.) rank among North America's most endangered shorebird species, facing compounding environmental challenges that reduce habitat availability and suppress recruitment and survival rates. Despite these challenges, research on the direct effects of climate variability and extremes on their breeding ecology remains limited. Here, we employ a spatiotemporal modelling approach to investigate how location, nest timing and weather conditions influence reproductive success rates in a small breeding population of C. m. melodus in Prince Edward Island (PEI), Canada from 2011 to 2023. Analysis of 40 years of monitoring records from a subset of nesting sites revealed that flooding and predation have been persistent sources of reproductive failures in

SUBMITTER: Guild R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11303845 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature