Interaction of climate change with effects of conspecific and heterospecific density on reproduction

We studied the relationship between temperature and the coexistence of great titParus majorand blue titCyanistes caeruleus, breeding in 75 study plots across Europe and North Africa. We expected an advance in laying date and a reduction in clutch size during warmer springs as a general response to climate warming and a delay in laying date and a reduction in clutch size during warmer winters due to density-dependent effects. As expected, as spring temperature increases laying date advances and as winter temperature increases clutch size is reduced in both species. Density of great tit affected the relationship between winter temperature and laying date in great and blue tit. Specifically, as density of great tit increased and temperature in winter increased both species started to reproduce later. Density of blue tit affected the relationship between spring temperature and blue and great tit laying date. Thus, both species start to reproduce earlier with increasing spring temperature as density of blue tit increases, which was not an expected outcome, since we expected that increasing spring temperature should advance laying date, while increasing density should delay it cancelling each other out. Climate warming and its interaction with density affects clutch size of great tits but not of blue tits. As predicted, great tit clutch size is reduced more with density of blue tits as temperature in winter increases. The relationship between spring temperature and density on clutch size of great tits depends on whether the increase is in density of great tit or blue tit. Therefore, an increase in temperature negatively affected the coexistence of blue and great tits differently in both species. Thus, blue tit clutch size was unaffected by the interaction effect of density with temperature, while great tit clutch size was affected in multiple ways by these interactions terms.Peer reviewe

Dense matter with eXTP

eXTP offers unprecedented discovery space for the EOS of cold supranuclear density matter. eXTP\u2019s large area will enable the most sensitive searches for accretion-powered pulsations and burst oscillations ever undertaken. Both yield the spin frequency of the NS; a single measurement of sub millisecond period spin would provide a clean and extremely robust constraint on the EOS. However, eXTP will also deliver high precision measurements of M and R. The combination of large effective area and polarimeter will enable us to deploy multiple independent techniques: pulse profile modelling of accretionpowered pulsations, burst oscillations, and rotation-powered pulsations; spectral modelling of bursts, and using phenomena related to the accretion disc such as kHz QPOs and the relativistic Fe line. Many sources show several of these phenomena, allowing us to make completely independent measurements for a single source, to reduce systematic errors. Examples of targets in this class include the accretionpowered millisecond pulsar SAX J1808.4\u20133658, which goes into regular outburst, and the persistently accreting burster 4U 1636\u2013536. We anticipate that eXTP could delivery precision constraints on M and R, at the few percent level, for of order 10 sources for a reasonable observing plan and given the anticipated mission lifetime. This would be unprecedented in terms of mapping the EOS and expanding the frontiers of dense matter physics