July 23, 2018, USDA Forest Service
A warmer future may lead to a
common Midwestern songbird becoming considerably less common, according to a
team of researchers whose study of the population-level impacts of climate
change on Acadian flycatchers was published today in the journal Nature
Climate Change.
The study by lead author Thomas
Bonnot of the University of Missouri-Columbia and co-authors, including Frank
Thompson, a research wildlife biologist with the USDA Forest Service's Northern
Research Station, predicted Acadian flycatcher populations through the year
2100 across the 96-million-acre Central Hardwoods Region.
To assess how climate change might
affect the Acadian flycatcher's regional population over time, researchers
combined data on local-scale, individual breeding productivity with
different climate scenarios
in a dynamic-landscape metapopulation model. Under severe warming projections,
flycatchers breeding in many areas of the Central Hardwoods would produce fewer
than one fledgling per female per year by 2100, researchers found.
"With breeding productivity
reduced to this extent, this currently abundant species will suffer population declines
substantial enough to pose a significant risk of quasi-extinction from the
region in the twenty-first century," according to Thompson.
In addition to changes in forest
habitat that would affect flycatchers, warmer temperatures are likely to
increase nest predation, especially by snakes, which are a significant predator
on Acadian flycatcher nests.
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