Bird
diversity shifts upslope in tropical mountainous terrain
Date: September 6, 2018
Source: University of Utah
The cloud
forests of Honduras can seem like an otherworldly place, where the trees are
thick with life that takes in water straight from the air around it, and the
soundscape is littered with the calls of animals singing back and forth.
Otherworldly,
yes, but scientists have found that the cloud forests are not immune to very
down-to-earth problems of climate change and deforestation. A 10-year study of
bird populations in Cusuco National Park, Honduras, shows that the peak of bird
diversity in this mountainous park is moving higher in elevation. Additional
land protection, unfortunately, may not be enough to reverse the trend, driven
in part by globally rising temperatures. The study is published
in Biotropica.
"A
lot of these species are specialized to these mountain ranges," says study
lead author Monte Neate-Clegg, a doctoral student at the University of Utah,
"and they don't have a lot of options as to where to go should things go
wrong."
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