Synching with seasonality: Predicting roe deer parturition phenology across its distributional range

作者：Johanna Kauffert, A. J. Mark Hewison, Benedikt Gehr, Torsten Hothorn, Sophie Baur, Jean‐Michel Gaillard, Petter Kjellander, Andreas König, Jörg Müller, Manuela Panzacchi, M. Pellerin, Bálint Tamási, Wibke Peters, Annette Menzel · 发表于：Journal of Animal Ecology · 年份：2025 · DOI：10.1111/1365-2656.70148 · 被引用次数：2 · 研究领域：Wildlife Ecology and Conservation、Species Distribution and Climate Change、Land Use and Ecosystem Services

Latitude and elevation are the most commonly studied drivers of large-scale variation in the phenology of life-history events. However, these coarse gradients cannot reliably predict observed spatial variation in phenology. Although it is less often investigated, environmental predictability is also a selective force that constrains spatial variation in life-history events. Here, we explore how environmental predictability contributes to shaping spatial variation in the parturition phenology of roe deer across its distributional range in Europe. We compiled data on roe deer parturition dates across Europe within the research collaboration EURODEER, and from citizen scientists and related birth dates to elevation and environmental predictability, measured by Colwell's metrics of contingency and constancy, based on high-resolution climate and NDVI values. We predicted parturition timing and synchrony simultaneously within a single modelling framework using a distributional regression model (i.e. GAMLSS). Our approach provided more robust predictions of variation in birth phenology than commonly used approaches based on the combination of latitude and elevation. We found that roe deer align their parturition dates with both elevation and seasonality in environmental conditions. We also identified an apparent shift towards later parturition from west to east across the distributional range in Europe, putatively linked to relatively milder and more constant climates in the west. C...