Abstract
Global climate change is shifting many species’ phenology and has created a number of key mismatches that threaten population persistence. Phenotypically plastic individuals have the ability to adjust their behaviour in response to environmental change. While phenotypic plasticity may serve as a buffer, it is generally not known whether in case this plasticity is insufficient there is additive genetic variation in the phenological trait so that populations’ may also show an evolutionary response. We show that hibernation emergence date of yellow-bellied marmots (Marmota flaviventer), a trait that has been significantly advancing in recent years and is associated with increased spring temperature, is phenotypically plastic. Furthermore, we used the quantitative genetic ‘animal model’ to decompose variation in emergence date and show there is significant heritable variation. We infer that so far phenotypic plasticity has allowed marmots to track the environmental changes leading to earlier emergence and suggest that in the short run, marmots may be able to continue to plastically respond to environmental change and thus that this trait potentially can evolve when the plasticity no longer buffers the selection for earlier emergence.
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Data accessibility
Data and code are available on the OSF: https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/924PK.
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Acknowledgements
We thank the many marmoteers who have contributed to the dataset over the years, the Blumstein lab and two anonymous reviewers for constructive comments on prior drafts.
Funding
D.T.B. was supported by the National Geographic Society, UCLA (Faculty Senate and the Division of Life Sciences), a Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory research fellowship, and NSF-IDBR-0754247, DEB-1119660 and 1557130 (to DTB); and NSF-DBI 0242960, 0731346, and 1262713 (to the RMBL).
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JAM and DTB conceived the project, JGAM and DTB collected data, MNE organized and proofed the data, JGAM analyzed the data, all authors discussed results and wrote the MS.
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Marmots were studied under annual permits issued by the Colorado Division of Wildlife (TR-917). All procedures were approved under research protocol ARC 2001-191-01 by the University of California Los Angeles Animal Care Committee on 13 May 2002, and renewed annually.
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Appendix
Appendix
Boxplot of the mass the previous August as a function of age and sex categories in yellow-bellied marmots using 901 mass measurements from 516 individuals. The bold horizontal lines and notches represent the median and 95% confidence interval around the median. The top and bottom of the boxes are the 25% and 75% quartiles. The whiskers extend to 1.5 the interquartile range and points are potential outliers
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Edic, M.N., Martin, J.G.A. & Blumstein, D.T. Heritable variation in the timing of emergence from hibernation. Evol Ecol 34, 763–776 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10682-020-10060-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10682-020-10060-2