Work contributes to more accurate
future species distribution models
Date: July 20, 2016
Source: University of
Massachusetts at Amherst
A new study of population trends
among 46 ecologically diverse bird species in North America conducted by avian
ecologist Joel Ralston and colleagues at the University of Massachusetts
Amherst overturns a long-held assumption that the climate conditions occupied
by a species do not change over time.
Instead, as the researchers
report in the current early online issue of Global Ecology and
Biogeography, birds that have increased in abundance over the last 30 years now
occupy a wider range of climate conditions than they did 30 years ago, and
declining species are occupying a smaller range of climate conditions than 30
years ago, Ralston says.
Species with relatively stable
population trends maintained them. The authors believe this is the first study
to investigate the relationship between population trend and the range of
climatic conditions occupied, or "climate niche breadth" (CNB).
Ralston, now at Saint Mary's
College, Notre Dame, Indiana, says, "It was previously thought that as
species expand their ranges, they would do so while maintaining their climate
niche. We show that as species become more abundant, they are actually moving
into new climate conditions, and declining species are disappearing from some
of the climate conditions they used to be found in. This makes theoretical
sense but it counters the long-held assumption that climate niche breadth
doesn't change in species."
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