Data from: Cascading effects of climate variability on the breeding success of an edge population of an apex predator

1. Large-scale environmental forces can influence biodiversity at
different levels of biological organization. Climate, in particular, is
often associated to species distributions and diversity gradients.
However, its mechanistic link to population dynamics is still poorly
understood. 2. Here, we unraveled the full mechanistic path by which a
climatic driver, the Atlantic trade winds, determines the viability of a
bird population. 3. We monitored the breeding population of Eleonora’s
falcons in the Canary Islands for over a decade (2007-2017) and integrated
different methods and data to reconstruct how the availability of their
prey (migratory birds) is regulated by trade winds. We tracked foraging
movements of breeding adults using GPS, monitored departure of migratory
birds using weather radar, and simulated their migration trajectories
using an individual-based, spatially explicit model. 4. We demonstrate
that regional easterly winds regulate the flux of migratory birds that is
available to hunting falcons, determining food availability for their
chicks and consequent breeding success. By reconstructing how migratory
birds are pushed towards the Canary Islands by trade winds, we explain
most of the variation (up to 86%) in annual productivity for over a
decade. 5. This study unequivocally illustrates how a climatic driver can
influence local-scale demographic processes, while providing novel
evidence of wind as a major determinant of population fitness in a top
predator. 06-Jul-2020