The Timing of Reproduction is Responding Plastically, not Genetically,
to Climate Change in Yellow-Bellied Marmots (Marmota flaviventer).
Abstract
With global climates changing rapidly, animals must adapt to new
environmental conditions with altered weather and phenology. Key to
adapting to these new conditions is adjusting the timing of reproduction
to maximize fitness. Using a long-term dataset on a wild population of
yellow-bellied marmots (Marmota flaviventer) at the Rocky Mountain
Biological Laboratory (RMBL), we investigated how the timing of
reproduction changed with changing spring conditions over the past 50
years. Marmots are hibernators with a four-month active season. It is
thus crucial to reproduce early enough in the season to have time to
prepare for hibernation, but not too early so as snow cover prevents
access to food. Importantly, climate change in this area has increased
spring temperatures by 5 oC and decreased spring snowpack by 50 cm over
the past 50 years. We evaluated how female marmots adjust the timing of
their reproduction in response to the changing conditions and estimated
the importance of both genetic variance and plasticity in the variation
in this timing. We showed that, within a year, the timing of
reproduction is not as tightly linked to the date a female emerges from
hibernation as previously thought. We reported a positive effect of
spring snowpack but not of spring temperature on the timing of
reproduction. We found inter-individual variation in the timing of
reproduction, including low heritability, but not in its response to
changing spring conditions. There was directional selection for earlier
pup emergence date since it increased the number and proportion of pups
surviving their first winter. Taken together, the timing of marmot
reproduction might evolve via natural selection, however, plastic
changes will also be extremely important as long as plasticity is not
limited. Further, future studies on the marmots should not operate under
the assumption that females reproduce immediately following their
emergence.