Impacts of predator-mediated interactions along a climatic gradient on the population dynamics of an alpine bird.

ABSTRACT: According to classic theory, species' population dynamics and distributions are less influenced by species interactions under harsh climatic conditions compared to under more benign climatic conditions. In alpine and boreal ecosystems in Fennoscandia, the cyclic dynamics of rodents strongly affect many other species, including ground-nesting birds such as ptarmigan. According to the 'alternative prey hypothesis' (APH), the densities of ground-nesting birds and rodents are positively associated due to predator-prey dynamics and prey-switching. However, it remains unclear how the strength of these predator-mediated interactions change along a climatic harshness gradient in comparison with the effects of climatic variation. We built a hierarchical Bayesian model to estimate the sensitivity of

SUBMITTER: Bowler DE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7779518 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature