Synchrony in adult survival is remarkably strong among common temperate songbirds across France

Abstract

AbstractSynchronous variation in demographic parameters across species increases the risk of simultaneous local extinction, which lowers the probability of subsequent recolonization. Synchrony therefore tends to destabilize meta‐populations and meta‐communities. Quantifying interspecific synchrony in demographic parameters, like abundance, survival, or reproduction, is thus a way to indirectly assess the stability of meta‐populations and meta‐communities. Moreover, it is particularly informative to identify environmental drivers of interspecific synchrony because those drivers are important across species. Using a Bayesian hierarchical multisite multispecies mark–recapture model, we investigated temporal interspecific synchrony in annual adult apparent survival for 16 common songbird species across France for the period 2001–2016. Annual adult survival was largely synchronous among species (73%, 95% credible interval [47%–94%] of the variation among years was common to all species), despite species differing in ecological niche and life history. This result was robust to different model formulations, uneven species sample sizes, and removing the long‐term trend in survival. Synchrony was also shared across migratory strategies, which suggests that environmental forcing during the 4‐month temperate breeding season has a large‐scale, interspecific impact on songbird survival. However, the strong interspecific synchrony was not easily explained by a set of candidate weather variables we defined a priori. Spring weather variables explained only 1.4% [0.01%–5.5%] of synchrony, while the contribution of large‐scale winter weather indices may have been stronger but uncertain, accounting for 12% [0.3%–37%] of synchrony. Future research could jointly model interspecific variation and covariation in breeding success, age‐dependent survival, and age‐dependent dispersal to understand when interspecific synchrony in abundance emerges and destabilizes meta‐communities.