1. Extreme weather events have the potential to alter both short- and long-term population dynamics as well as community- and ecosystem-level function. Such events are rare and stochastic, making it difficult to fully document how organisms respond to them and predict the repercussions of similar events in the future. 2. To improve our understanding of the mechanisms by which short-term events can incur long-term consequences, we documented the behavioural responses and fitness consequences for a long-distance migratory bird, the continental black-tailed godwit Limosa limosa limosa, resulting from a spring snowstorm and three-week period of record low temperatures. 3. The event caused measurable responses at three spatial scales – continental, regional and local – including migratory delays (+19 days), reverse migrations (>90 km), elevated metabolic costs (+8·8% maintenance metabolic rate) and increased foraging rates (+37%). 4. There were few long-term fitness consequences, however, and subsequent breeding seasons instead witnessed high levels of reproductive success and little evidence of carry-over effects. 5. This suggests that populations with continued access to food, behavioural flexibility and time to dissipate the costs of the event can likely withstand the consequences of an extreme weather event. For populations constrained in one of these respects, though, extreme events may entail extreme ecological consequences.
Yearly Black-tailed Godwit Return Rates
This data includes data on whether or not an individual godwit that was seen in one year, returned to their breeding grounds the following year. All data is categorized in reference to individual godwits (signified by their Colour Code). The initial year in which an individual was seen is not marked, only the following year is denoted with a 0 (not seen) or a 1 (seen). It also includes a column denoting each molecular individual's sex--0 (unknown), 1 (female), and 2 (male).
Yearly Return Rates.xlsx
2013 March-May Resightings of Black-tailed Godwits
This file includes the date and location of all resightings of individually colour-marked Black-tailed Godwits from March-May 2013 north of Iberia. The colour codes listed in this file match up with those used in all other files for this publication.
2013 Resightings.xlsx
Fueling Data
This file contains data pertaining to the foraging rates of female Black-tailed Godwits in our study area in Friesland, The Netherlands during the spring of 2013. Data are grouped by individual by day and averaged across all of the three-minute periods for which that individual was observed on that day. Successes refers to the number of prey items consumed by an individual during a three minute period.
Response Data
This file contains data pertaining to the behavioral response of all individual Black-tailed Godwits that were seen in our study in Friesland during the spring of 2013. It includes their reproductive parameters in both 2013 and 2014, as well as their individual arrival date history. Response type is coded as: 1 (stayed), 2 (reverse migrated), 3 (delayed arrival), and 4 (normally late arriving). For all other categories, 0 denotes a negative result (e.g., nest failed), while 1 denotes a positive result (e.g., fledged successfully).
All nests 2005-2014
This file contains data on nests found in our study area in Friesland between 2005-2014. It includes their hatching success, fledging success, clutch size, average egg volume, and initiation date, as well as the colour code of the corresponding adults. In all cases, 0 denotes a negative result (i.e., nest failed to hatch), and 1 a positive result (i.e., nest hatched).
All nests.csv
Breeding Propensity
This files contains data on the breeding propensity of Black-tailed Godwits seen in our study area prior to the initiation of the first nest from 2005-2014. A 0 denotes that an individual was not found nesting, a 1 that it was found nesting, and a blank that it was not seen in that year.
Propensity.xlsx
Polder Counts
This file contains data on the number of territorial Black-tailed Godwits seen during our weekly survey of every parcel of every polder in our study area in Friesland during the pre-breeding period. In this file, NA = 0 territorial godwits during a survey period.