Mason, LR;
Green, RE;
Howard, C;
Stephens, PA;
Willis, SG;
Aunins, A;
Brotons, L;
... Gregory, RD; + view all
(2019)
Population responses of bird populations to climate change on two continents vary with species' ecological traits but not with direction of change in climate suitability.
Climatic Change
, 157
(3-4)
pp. 337-354.
10.1007/s10584-019-02549-9.
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Abstract
Climate change is a major global threat to biodiversity with widespread impacts on ecological communities. Evidence for beneficial impacts on populations is perceived to be stronger and more plentiful than that for negative impacts, but few studies have investigated this apparent disparity, or how ecological factors affect population responses to climatic change. We examined the strength of the relationship between species-specific regional population changes and climate suitability trends (CST), using 30-year datasets of population change for 525 breeding bird species in Europe and the USA. These data indicate a consistent positive relationship between population trend and CST across the two continents. Importantly, we found no evidence that this positive relationship differs between species expected to be negatively and positively impacted across the entire taxonomic group, suggesting that climate change is causing equally strong, quantifiable population increases and declines. Species’ responses to changing climatic suitability varied with ecological traits, however, particularly breeding habitat preference and body mass. Species associated with inland wetlands responded most strongly and consistently to recent climatic change. In Europe, smaller species also appeared to respond more strongly, whilst the relationship with body mass was less clear-cut for North American birds. Overall, our results identify the role of certain traits in modulating responses to climate change and emphasise the importance of long-term data on abundance for detecting large-scale species’ responses to environmental changes.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Population responses of bird populations to climate change on two continents vary with species' ecological traits but not with direction of change in climate suitability |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1007/s10584-019-02549-9 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-019-02549-9 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © The Author(s) 2019. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences > Div of Biosciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences > Div of Biosciences > Genetics, Evolution and Environment |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10089288 |
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