Hardship at birth alters the impact of climate change on a long-lived predator

Climate change is increasing the frequency of extreme events, such as droughts or hurricanes, with substantial impacts on human and wildlife communities. Extreme events can affect individuals through two pathways: by altering the fitness of adults encountering a current extreme, and by affecting the development of individuals born during a natal extreme, a largely overlooked process. Here, we show that the impact of natal drought on an avian predator overrode the effect of current drought for decades, so that individuals born during drought were disadvantaged throughout life. Incorporation of natal effects caused a 40% decline in forecasted population size and a 21% shortening of time to extinction. These results imply that climate change may erode populations more quickly and severely than currently appreciated, suggesting the urgency to incorporate “penalties” for natal legacies in the analytical toolkit of impact forecasts. Similar double impacts may apply to other drivers of global change.
Logistic and technical support was provided by ICTS-RBD-CSIC, Ministry of Science and Innovation and co-financed by FEDER Funds. This study was funded by the Foundation Jaime González-Gordon and by the research projects 1602/2015 (F.S.) of the Spanish Ministry of Agriculture, Food and the Environment (Autonomous Organism of National Parks), PGC2018-095860-B-I00 (F.S.) of the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities with Feder Funds, and P18-FR-4239 (F.S.) of the Andalucía Autonomous Region (Consejería de Economía, Conocimiento, Empresas y Universidad).