Does rainfall or temperature influence antipredator vigilance in a hibernating mammal?

As the global climate changes, temperatures are rising, snow is melting earlier, and rainfall is becoming more variable, and these climatic changes may create an ecological mismatch. While prior work has shown how animals respond to these changes physiologically and behaviorally, few have specifically investigated antipredator behavior, an essential activity. In many species, there are direct fitness tradeoffs between allocating time and energy to antipredator vigilance and foraging. To discover how these tradeoffs are affected by climate change, we studied how temperature, snowmelt date, and rainfall affected the proportion of time yellow-bellied marmots (Marmota flaviventer) allocated to vigilance during bouts of foraging. While snowmelt and temperature did not explain variation in vigilance, rainfall did. Higher rainfall in the week prior to a focal observation was associated with higher vigilance, possibly reflecting more abundant food that affords the luxury of increasing antipredator vigilance while foraging. Such an effect might be consequential at the population level given the importance of foraging and antipredator behaviors for a highly time restrictive hibernating species. Further research is necessary to determine consequences at the population level and whether and how these findings extend to other species.