Table 2.

Summary results of the model-averaging approach exploring the effect of average climatic and ECE variables on the number of fledglings in blue tits. The climatic measures concern three successive nestling stages: 0–7 days (HAT), 8–15 days (NES) and 17–21 days (FLE). The averaged slope corresponds to the averaging of predictor estimates among all selected models weighted by the Akaike weight of each model. These slopes can be interpreted as the effect of the presence of ECEs and the mean climate (temperature and precipitation) during each nestling stage on the number of fledglings. See §2 for abbreviations used here. Relative importance represents the probability that the variable was included in the best model. Variables with a relative importance above 80% are shown in italics.

ECE and MEAN climate by stage	averaged slope	relative importance (%)
Intercept	7.988 ± 0.304	—
HAT MEAN T°C	−0.012 ± 0.038	14
HAT MEAN RAIN	−0.001 ± 0.007	3
HAT HOT T°C	−0.067 ± 0.182	27
HAT COLD T°C	0.078 ± 0.194	29
HAT Ext RAIN	−0.038 ± 0.124	21
NES MEAN T°C	0.007 ± 0.029	9
NES MEAN RAIN	−0.038 ± 0.061	33
NES HOT T°C	−0.841 ± 0.254	99
NES COLD T°C	0.018 ± 0.171	23
NES Ext RAIN	−0.505 ± 0.387	75
FLE MEAN T°C	−0.075 ± 0.087	50
FLE MEAN RAIN	0.001 ± 0.014	5
FLE HOT T°C	0.705 ± 0.348	93
FLE COLD T°C	0.414 ± 0.476	60
FLE Ext RAIN	−0.429 ± 0.320	77