G-2 Hot and Bothered II: Climate Change, Cannibalism, and Ovulation Synchrony

In the previous talk, “Hot and Bothered I”, we found that increasing sea surface temperatures (SST) are associated with a lack of food for surface-feeding marine birds, which leads to a higher rate of egg cannibalism in seabird colonies. If more eggs are laid at one time, each egg has a smaller chance of being cannibalized due to “predator satiation”; hence, ovulation synchrony could confer a selective advantage in the presence of egg cannibalism. We demonstrated the existence of ovulation synchrony in two species of colonial birds and formulated the following hypothesis: Rising SST and its concomitant food scarcity selects for cannibalism, which in turn selects for reproductive synchrony