Because of warmer winters, Florida scrub-jays are now nesting one week earlier than they did in 1981.
Because of warmer winters, Florida scrub-jays are now nesting one week earlier than they did in 1981. But these early birds are not always getting the worm.
A new analysis of data from a long-term study, published Oct. 24 in Ornithology, finds that warmer winters driven by climate change reduced the number of offspring raised annually by the federally threatened Florida scrub-jay by 25% since 1981.
Warmer temperatures, the scientists hypothesize, make jay nests susceptible to predation by snakes for a longer period of the Florida spring than in the past.
Researchers from Archbold Biological Station and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology examined 37 years of data to assess the impacts of warming on reproductive effort. From 1981 to 2018, the average winter temperature at Archbold Biological Station increased by 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit.
Read more at Cornell University
Photo Credit: tylerbcar via Pixabay
