Halimubieke, N;
Lin, X;
Almalki, M;
Huang, Q;
Liu, Y;
Zhang, T;
Zhang, Z;
... Liu, Y; + view all
(2024)
Breeding ecology of a high-altitude shorebird in the Qinghai–Tibetan Plateau.
Journal of Ornithology
10.1007/s10336-024-02159-y.
(In press).
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Abstract
Shorebirds are facing global decline as a consequence of anthropogenic effects that include habitat loss, increased predation and climate change. Although some shorebirds are extensively studied, basic data on life history, ecology and behaviour are still lacking especially for populations where climate change is expected to have severe effects. Here, we provide the first detailed investigation of a high-altitude nesting shorebird in the Qinghai–Tibetan Plateau, the Tibetan Sand Plover Charadrius atrifrons. This alpine-breeding Central-Asian species recently split from the Lesser Sand Plover Charadrius mongolus that breeds in Eastern Siberia. Understanding the fundamental ecology and behaviour of alpine-breeding shorebirds is important for predicting the challenges these high-altitude species will face given the human-driven environmental changes that are likely to take place in these habitats. Here, we show that Tibetan Sand Plovers in the Qinghai–Tibetan Plateau have a short breeding season from mid-May to late-June, and exhibit social monogamy and bi-parental care of the clutch. Since they have low hatching success (18 of 57 nests hatched) and no chance of renesting, maintaining population size in the future may pose a challenge. To provide essential information for protection of this species in a vulnerable habitat, further demographic studies are warranted to better understand how climate change will mould adaptations of this specialised high-altitude species to their environment.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Breeding ecology of a high-altitude shorebird in the Qinghai–Tibetan Plateau |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1007/s10336-024-02159-y |
| Publisher version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10336-024-02159-y |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
| Keywords: | Sand plover · Breeding success · Incubation · Climate change · Plateau |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS > Dept of Anthropology |
| URI: | https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10190308 |
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