Abstract
Populations of some fish- and meat-eating birds suffered dramatic declines globally following the introduction of organochlorine pesticides during the late 1940s and 1950s. It has been hypothesised that these population declines during the 1950s–1970s were largely driven by a combination of reproductive failure due to eggshell-thinning, egg breakage and embryonic death attributable to DDT and its metabolites, and to enhanced mortality attributable to the more toxic cyclodiene compounds such as aldrin and dieldrin.
Using 75 years (1946–2021) of Peregrine falcon (Falco peregrinus) monitoring data (315 unique nest-sites monitored for 6110 nest-years), we studied the breeding performance of a resident Peregrine population in southern Scotland relative to the spatiotemporal pattern of organochlorine pesticide use.
We show that (i) Peregrine breeding success and measures of breeding performance increased substantially following the reduction in, and subsequently a complete ban on, the use of organochlorine pesticides; (ii) improvements in Peregrine breeding performance were more dramatic in southeastern Scotland where agriculture was the predominant land use than in southwestern Scotland where there was less arable and more forested land; (iii) Peregrines nesting closer to the coast generally had higher fledging success (that is, a higher proportion of clutches that produced at least one fledgeling) than those nesting inland farther away from the coast; (iv) low temperatures and excessive rain in May negatively affected Peregrine fledging success; and (v) Peregrine abundance increased in parallel with improvements in reproductive performance following the reduction and then complete ban on the use of organochlorine pesticides in the UK. However, recovery was gradual and occurred over four decades, and rate of recovery varied among measures of reproductive performance (egg, nestling and fledgeling production).
Our results suggest that the temporal pattern of organochlorine pesticide use strongly influenced Peregrine reproductive parameters but that the pattern of influence differed regionally. Overall results are consistent with the hypothesis that reproductive failure caused by organochlorine pesticides was an important driver of the decline in the south Scottish Peregrine population, and that improvements in all measures of breeding performance following a reduction and eventual ban on organochlorine use facilitated the observed increase in this population.
Using 75 years (1946–2021) of Peregrine falcon (Falco peregrinus) monitoring data (315 unique nest-sites monitored for 6110 nest-years), we studied the breeding performance of a resident Peregrine population in southern Scotland relative to the spatiotemporal pattern of organochlorine pesticide use.
We show that (i) Peregrine breeding success and measures of breeding performance increased substantially following the reduction in, and subsequently a complete ban on, the use of organochlorine pesticides; (ii) improvements in Peregrine breeding performance were more dramatic in southeastern Scotland where agriculture was the predominant land use than in southwestern Scotland where there was less arable and more forested land; (iii) Peregrines nesting closer to the coast generally had higher fledging success (that is, a higher proportion of clutches that produced at least one fledgeling) than those nesting inland farther away from the coast; (iv) low temperatures and excessive rain in May negatively affected Peregrine fledging success; and (v) Peregrine abundance increased in parallel with improvements in reproductive performance following the reduction and then complete ban on the use of organochlorine pesticides in the UK. However, recovery was gradual and occurred over four decades, and rate of recovery varied among measures of reproductive performance (egg, nestling and fledgeling production).
Our results suggest that the temporal pattern of organochlorine pesticide use strongly influenced Peregrine reproductive parameters but that the pattern of influence differed regionally. Overall results are consistent with the hypothesis that reproductive failure caused by organochlorine pesticides was an important driver of the decline in the south Scottish Peregrine population, and that improvements in all measures of breeding performance following a reduction and eventual ban on organochlorine use facilitated the observed increase in this population.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 2201-2213 |
| Number of pages | 13 |
| Journal | Journal of Animal Ecology |
| Volume | 92 |
| Issue number | 11 |
| Early online date | 21 Sept 2023 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Nov 2023 |
Bibliographical note
We are grateful to the Scottish Raptor Study Group and the Ringing Unit of the British Trust for Ornithology for their crucial ongoing work monitoring Peregrine Falcons in Scotland, and for making the data available to us. We thank the Leverhulme Trust (Grant # VP2-2020-002 to MKO), the University of Aberdeen School of Biological Sciences, the University of Florida and International Avian Research, Austria for supporting this collaborative work. We are grateful to Steffen Oppel, Nigel Yoccoz, Roberto Salguero-Gómez and two anonymous reviewers for many helpful comments on the manuscript, and to Remo Probst for the German translation of the abstract.Data Availability Statement
Data available from the University of Florida Institutional Repository: https://original-ufdc.uflib.ufl.edu/l/IR00012126/00001 (Oli et al., 2023).Keywords
- Brood size
- clutch size
- DDT
- Falco peregrinus
- Fledging success
- hatching success
- long-term population monitoring
- organochlorine pesticide
Access to Document
- Oli_etal_JAE_Reproductive_Performance_Of_VOR
© 2023 The Authors. Journal of Animal Ecology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Ecological Society. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.