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Bird population trends are linearly affected by climate change along species thermal ranges
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Beyond the effects of temperature increase on local population trends and on species distribution shifts, how populations of a given species are affected by climate change along a species range is still unclear. We tested whether and how species responses to climate change are related to the populations locations within the species thermal range. We compared the average 20 year growth rates of 62 terrestrial breeding birds in three European countries along the latitudinal gradient of the species ranges. After controlling for factors already reported to affect bird population trends (habitat specialization, migration distance and body mass), we found that populations breeding close to the species thermal maximum have lower growth rates than those in other parts of the thermal range, while those breeding close to the species thermal minimum have higher growth rates. These results were maintained even after having controlled for the effect of latitude per se. Therefore, the results cannot solely be explained by latitudinal clines linked to the geographical structure in local spring warming. Indeed, we found that populations are not just responding to changes in temperature at the hottest and coolest parts of the species range, but that they show a linear graded response across their European thermal range. We thus provide insights into how populations respond to climate changes. We suggest that projections of future species distributions, and also management options and conservation assessments, cannot be based on the assumption of a uniform response to climate change across a species range or at range edges only.
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Integrating multiple lines of evidence into historical biogeography hypothesis testing: a Bison bison case study
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One of the grand goals of historical biogeography is to understand how and why species’ population sizes and distributions change over time. Multiple types of data drawn from disparate fields, combined into a single modelling framework, are necessary to document changes in a species’s demography and distribution, and to determine the drivers responsible for change. Yet truly integrated approaches are challenging and rarely performed. Here, we discuss a modelling framework that integrates spatio-temporal fossil data, ancient DNA, palaeoclimatological reconstruc- tions, bioclimatic envelope modelling and coalescence models in order to statistically test alternative hypotheses of demographic and potential distri- butional changes for the iconic American bison (Bison bison). Using different assumptions about the evolution of the bioclimatic niche, we generate hypothetical distributional and demographic histories of the species. We then test these demographic models by comparing the genetic signature pre- dicted by serial coalescence against sequence data derived from subfossils and modern populations. Our results supported demographic models that include both climate and human-associated drivers of population declines. This synthetic approach, integrating palaeoclimatology, bioclimatic envel- opes, serial coalescence, spatio-temporal fossil data and heterochronous DNA sequences, improves understanding of species’ historical biogeography by allowing consideration of both abiotic and biotic interactions at the population level
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Grassland Vegetation Changes and Nocturnal Global Warming
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Global minimum temperatures (TMIN) are increasing faster than maximum temperatures, but the ecological consequences of this are largely unexplored. Long-term data sets from the shortgrass steppe were used to identify corre- lations between TMIN and several vegetation variables. This ecosystem is po- tentially sensitive to increases in TMIN. Most notably, increased spring TMIN was correlated with decreased net primary production by the dominant C4 grass (Bouteloua gracilis) and with increased abundance and production by exotic and native C3 forbs. Reductions in B. gracilis may make this system more vulnerable to invasion by exotic species and less tolerant of drought and grazing.
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Bergmann’s rule and climate change revisited: Disentangling environmental and genetic responses in a wild bird population
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Ecological responses to on-going climate change are numerous, diverse, and taxonomically widespread. However, with one exception, the relative roles of phenotypic plasticity and microevolution as mechanisms in explaining these responses are largely unknown. Several recent studies have uncovered evidence for temporal declines in mean body sizes of birds and mammals, and these responses have been interpreted as evidence for microevolution in the context of Bergmann’s rule—an ecogeographic rule predicting an inverse correlation between temperature and mean body size in endothermic animals. We used a dataset of individually marked red-billed gulls (Larus novaehollandiae scopulinus) from New Zealand to document phenotypic and genetic changes in mean body mass over a 47-year (1958–2004) period. We found that, whereas the mean body mass had decreased over time as ambient temperatures increased, analyses of breeding values estimated with an ‘‘animal model’’ approach showed no evidence for any genetic change. These results indicate that the frequently observed climate-change-related responses in mean body size of animal populations might be due to phenotypic plasticity, rather than to genetic microevolutionary responses.
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The Evolution and Distribution of Species Body Size
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The distribution of species body size within taxonomic groups exhibits a heavy right tail extending over many orders of magnitude, where most species are much larger than the smallest species. We provide a simple model of cladogenetic diffusion over evolutionary time that omits explicit mechanisms for interspecific competition and other microevolutionary processes, yet fully explains the shape of this distribution. We estimate the model’s parameters from fossil data and find that it robustly reproduces the distribution of 4002 mammal species from the late Quaternary. The observed fit suggests that the asymmetric distribution arises from a fundamental trade-off between the short-term selective advantages (Cope’s rule) and long-term selective risks of increased species body size in the presence of a taxon-specific lower limit on body size
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Thriving Arctic Bottom Dwellers Could Get Strangled by Warming
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Many biologists hypothesize that climate change could hurt the Arctic benthos and the large creatures that live off it by wiping out ice (and hence ice algae), lengthening growing seasons for zooplankton, and giving warm- water species a foothold. “The way the system works now is very much in favor of the benthos,” says UAF polar ecologist Rolf Gradinger. “If the sys- tem changes, things could go downhill fast.”
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Global evidence that deforestation amplifies flood risk and severity in the developing world
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With the wide acceptance of forest-protection policies in the developing world comes a requirement for clear demonstrations of how deforestation may erode human well-being and economies. For centuries, it has been believed that forests provide protection against flooding. However, such claims have given rise to a heated polemic, and broad-scale quantitative evidence of the possible role of forests in flood protection has not been forthcoming. Using data collected from 1990 to 2000 from 56 developing countries, we show using generalized linear and mixed-effects models contrasted with information- theoretic measures of parsimony that flood frequency is negatively correlated with the amount of remaining natural forest and positively correlated with natural forest area loss (after controlling for rainfall, slope and degraded landscape area). The most parsimo- nious models accounted for over 65% of the variation in flood frequency, of which nearly 14% was due to forest cover variables alone. During the decade investigated, nearly 100 000 people were killed and 320 million people were displaced by floods, with total reported economic damages exceeding US$1151 billion. Extracted measures of flood severity (flood duration, people killed and displaced, and total damage) showed some weaker, albeit detectable correlations to natural forest cover and loss. Based on an arbitrary decrease in natural forest area of 10%, the model-averaged prediction of flood frequency increased between 4% and 28% among the countries modeled. Using the same hypothetical decline in natural forest area resulted in a 4–8% increase in total flood duration. These correlations suggest that global-scale patterns in mean forest trends across countries are meaningful with respect to flood dynamics. Unabated loss of forests may increase or exacerbate the number of flood-related disasters, negatively impact millions of poor people, and inflict trillions of dollars in damage in disadvantaged economies over the coming decades. This first global-scale empirical demonstration that forests are correlated with flood risk and severity in developing countries reinforces the imperative for large-scale forest protection to protect human welfare, and suggests that reforestation may help to reduce the frequency and severity of flood-related catastrophes.
Keywords: conservation, damage, flooding events, forest loss, generalized linear mixed-effects models, generalized linear models, human displacement, projected costs, rainfall
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Vegetation synchronously leans upslope as climate warms
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Ecologists have long sought to understand how vegetation re- lates to climate (1, 2). Such knowledge underlies effective mitigation and adaptation to contempo- rary climate change (3). Warming tem- peratures associated with anthropogenic increases in greenhouse gases have led ecologists to predict that vegetation gra- dients will ‘‘march’’ up the hill as cli- mate envelopes shift with elevation, at a lag that scales with species’ generation times (4, 5). This prediction derives from the hypothesis that low-temperature constraints relax in association with warming climate, resulting in more fa- vorable conditions for establishment and growth at the leading edge of a species’ range (e.g., the upper elevation bound- ary on a mountain) (6, 7). Because of competition and change in plant-available water, the trailing edge is expected to track the leading edge (5) with the cen- tral tendency expected to concurrently ‘‘march’’ upslope. This type of response has important implications for predict- ing and mitigating climate change impacts, particularly for vegetation span- ning elevation gradients. If, rather than collectively moving with climate change, responses of dominant species assem- bled along an elevation gradient are highly individualistic, there is greater potential for more novel, nonanalog veg- etation assemblages.
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Regional vegetation die-off in response to global-change-type drought
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uture drought is projected to occur under warmer temperature conditions as climate change progresses, referred to here as global- change-type drought, yet quantitative assessments of the triggers and potential extent of drought-induced vegetation die-off remain pivotal uncertainties in assessing climate-change impacts. Of par- ticular concern is regional-scale mortality of overstory trees, which rapidly alters ecosystem type, associated ecosystem properties, and land surface conditions for decades. Here, we quantify region- al-scale vegetation die-off across southwestern North American woodlands in 2002–2003 in response to drought and associated bark beetle infestations. At an intensively studied site within the region, we quantified that after 15 months of depleted soil water content, >90% of the dominant, overstory tree species (Pinus edulis, a pin ̃on) died. The die-off was reflected in changes in a remotely sensed index of vegetation greenness (Normalized Dif- ference Vegetation Index), not only at the intensively studied site but also across the region, extending over 12,000 km2 or more; aerial and field surveys confirmed the general extent of the die-off. Notably, the recent drought was warmer than the previous sub- continental drought of the 1950s. The limited, available observa- tions suggest that die-off from the recent drought was more extensive than that from the previous drought, extending into wetter sites within the tree species’ distribution. Our results quantify a trigger leading to rapid, drought-induced die-off of overstory woody plants at subcontinental scale and highlight the potential for such die-off to be more severe and extensive for future global-change-type drought under warmer conditions.
tree mortality vegetation dynamics climate change impacts woodlands Pinus edulis
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Climate change and tropical biodiversity: a new focus
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Considerable efforts are focused on the consequences of climate change for tropical rainforests. However, potentially the greatest threats to tropical biodiversity (synergistic interactions between climatic changes and human land use) remain understudied. Key concerns are that aridification could increase the accessibility of previously non-arable or remote lands, elevate fire impacts and exacerbate ecological effects of habitat disturbance. The growing climatic change literature often fails to appreciate that, in coming decades, climate–land use interac- tions might be at least as important as abiotic changes per se for the fate of tropical biodiversity. In this review, we argue that protected area expansion along key ecological gradients, regulation of human-lit fires, strategic forest–carbon financing and re-evaluations of agricultural and biofuel subsidies could ameliorate some of these synergistic threats.
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