Warm winters reduce landscape-scale variability in the duration of egg incubation for coho salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch) on the Copper River Delta, Alaska

Abstract

We quantified the sum of daily mean temperature above 0 °C and modeled incubation duration using water temperature data collected at 12 coho salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch) spawning sites during two incubation periods with cool, snow-dominant conditions and three incubation periods with anomalously warm, rain-transitional conditions, a proxy for a future climate scenario. Warmer water temperatures during warm–rain-transitional winters yielded a 58-day reduction in the median duration of egg incubation; however, the magnitude of change at individual sites varied widely and was controlled by water source. At groundwater-fed sites, temperature variations were strongly attenuated, leading to small interannual differences in incubation duration that were relatively insensitive to short-term changes in air temperature. In contrast, modeled incubation duration was shortened by up to 3 months during warm–rain-transitional winters at precipitation-fed sites. Remarkably, our modeling showed increased uniformity in incubation duration across the landscape during warm–rain-transitional winters. The potential loss of diversity in incubation duration during warmer winters, in isolation, may reduce portfolio effects in this region’s coho salmon population by promoting greater synchronization in the time of spawning.