Earlier colony arrival but no trend in hatching timing in two congeneric seabirds (Uria spp.) across the North Atlantic

Abstract

A global analysis recently showed that seabird breeding phenology (as the timing of egg-laying and hatching) does not, on average, respond to temperature changes or advance with time (Keogan <i>et al.</i> 2018 <i>Nat. Clim. Change</i> <b>8</b>, 313–318). This group, the most threatened of all birds, is therefore prone to spatio-temporal mismatches with their food resources. Yet, other aspects of the breeding phenology may also have a marked influence on breeding success, such as the arrival date of adults at the breeding site following winter migration. Here, we used a large tracking dataset of two congeneric seabirds breeding in 14 colonies across 18° latitudes, to show that arrival date at the colony was highly variable between colonies and species (ranging 80 days) and advanced 1.4 days/year while timing of egg-laying remained unchanged, resulting in an increasing pre-laying duration between 2009 and 2018. Thus, we demonstrate that potentially not all components of seabird breeding phenology are insensitive to changing environmental conditions.