Adult survival in a small seabird, Hydrobates leucorhous, covaries with the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation over the past six decades
Data files
May 01, 2025 version files 1.18 MB
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LHSP_survival_adults.csv
1.14 MB
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LHSP_survival_covariates.csv
7.24 KB
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LHSP_survival_script.txt
34.76 KB
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README.md
1.72 KB
Abstract
Seabirds’ annual survival is influenced by numerous factors, but oceanic conditions are among the most significant. Indices used to monitor these conditions typically cycle over decades. Using the longest capture-mark-recapture (CMR) time-series available for the species (1955-2023), we estimated apparent adult survival of Leach’s storm-petrels (Hydrobates leucorhous) from Kent Island, New Brunswick. We assessed whether survival covaried with large-scale oceanographic indices reflecting conditions at various periods in the life cycle. We used Cormack-Jolly-Seber CMR models to estimate annual apparent survival rate. Mean annual survival was φ = 0.84 ± 0.01 over the 68-year study period, and was variable across years (range: 0.62 ± 0.06 to 0.97 ± 0.05) with a concentration of high values between 1979-1989. Adult survival rate was inversely proportional to the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) index with a small but significant effect (β: -0.70 [-0.92 - -0.47], 13% of deviance explained), meaning low survival rates were associated with high AMO, indicating positive sea surface temperature anomalies over the North Atlantic. Such a relationship could only have been detected with extended long-term study since the AMO has a period of 60-80 years. Despite the challenges of maintaining long-term studies, they are more than ever essential in population ecology.
Survival analysis of Leach’s storm-petrel on Kent Island
Description of the data
The data comprises three files.
A file (LHSP_survival_adults.csv) of the resighting of adult Leach’s storm-petrel within 4 different sites (StudyArea) from 1955 to 2023. The columns correspond to the adult band number, the study area, and each year from 1955 to 2023. Years when one adult was sighted are presented as "1", otherwise as "NA".
A file (LHSP_survival_covariates.csv) with the values of several environmental covariates over the years of the dataset. Columns are: Year, Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation summer (AMOs), Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation year (AMOy), Annual Global Mean Temparature Anomaly (GMT), North Atlantic Oscillation summer (NAOs), North Atlantic Oscillation winter (NAOw), North Atlantic Oscillation winter with a one year (NOAw1) and 2 year gap (NAOw2), North Atlantic Oscillation year (NAOy), with a 1 year (NAOy1) and 2 year gap (NAOy2), Southern Oscillation Index winter (SOIw) and Southern Oscillation year (SOIy).
A script (LHSP_survival_script.txt) run in R version 4.2.2 and R Studio 2022.12.0 with the following libraries installed: RMark, R2ucare, tidyr, ggplot2, stringr, CMRhelper, gridExtra, psych.
The script goes through the process of removing transient birds, calculating the goodness of fit and the c.hat. Then the script creates several survival and recapture terms and create different lists of models, with or without the covariates and extract values of interest from the best model, and create figures of the manuscript.
- Pollet, Ingrid L.; Gutowsky, Sarah E.; Ronconi, Robert A. et al. (2025). Adult survival in a small seabird, Hydrobates leucorhous, covaries with the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation over the past six decades. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2024.2710