High fitness costs of climate change‐induced camouflage mismatch

• Published in: Ecology letters Vol. 19; no. 3; pp. 299 - 307
• Main Authors: Zimova, Marketa, Mills, L. Scott, Nowak, J. Joshua, Lawler, Joshua
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England Blackwell Science 01-03-2016; Blackwell Publishing Ltd
• Subjects: Animals; Camouflage; climate; Climate Change; color; evolutionary adaptation; evolutionary rescue; fitness; Food Chain; Global warming; hares; Hares - physiology; Longevity; molt phenology; Molting; mortality; natural selection; phenological mismatch; Phenology; Phenotype; Population Dynamics; Population Growth; Seasons; Selection, Genetic; Snow; snow cover; snowpack; snowshoe hare; evolutionary adaptation; natural selection; Camouflage; snow cover; fitness; snowshoe hare; evolutionary rescue; molt phenology; phenological mismatch; climate change
• ISSN: 1461-023X; 1461-0248
• DOI: 10.1111/ele.12568

Anthropogenic climate change has created myriad stressors that threaten to cause local extinctions if wild populations fail to adapt to novel conditions. We studied individual and population‐level fitness costs of a climate change‐induced stressor: camouflage mismatch in seasonally colour molting species confronting decreasing snow cover duration. Based on field measurements of radiocollared snowshoe hares, we found strong selection on coat colour molt phenology, such that animals mismatched with the colour of their background experienced weekly survival decreases up to 7%. In the absence of adaptive response, we show that these mortality costs would result in strong population‐level declines by the end of the century. However, natural selection acting on wide individual variation in molt phenology might enable evolutionary adaptation to camouflage mismatch. We conclude that evolutionary rescue will be critical for hares and other colour molting species to keep up with climate change.