European breeding bird declines associated with narrower climatic niches

Zalewska, Karolina, Gilroy, James J., Catry, Inês, Atkinson, Philip W., Klvaňová, Alena and Franco, Aldina M. A. (2025) European breeding bird declines associated with narrower climatic niches. Journal of Biogeography. ISSN 0305-0270

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Abstract

Aim: Anthropogenic climate change has increasingly been identified as a major threat to global biodiversity. However, the extent of this threat is likely to be uneven across species, due to differences in life histories or exposure to environmental change. The range of climatic conditions a species experiences across its range extent, known as the realised climatic niche, may be an indicator of species resilience to climate change. Species with large range extents, occurring across diverse climatic conditions, are expected to be less affected by climate change due to lower physiological constraints and tolerance to a wider range of climates. However, this may not be the case if local populations are adapted to specific environmental conditions. In this study, we investigate whether the extent of the species' realised climatic niche, also known as the climatic niche breadth, is linked to their long-term population trends. Location: Europe. Taxon: Birds. Methods: We extract climate data across the breeding-only and resident ranges of 159 European bird species and use an ordination method to produce a representation of the species climatic niches. We then relate the niche breadth of each species to their range area and incorporate this relationship, along with the species' diet, main habitat type, migratory status and average body mass, to investigate their relationship with the species long-term population trend. Results: Species with small range areas showed larger variation in climatic niche breadth than species with larger ranges. For species with similar range areas, those with broader climatic tolerance were less likely to be declining than those with narrow climatic niches. Main Conclusions: These findings can help us understand the threats associated with climate change and allow for rapid assessment of the importance of climatic factors on population trends, providing an invaluable tool for targeting habitat conservation.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	Data Availability Statement: The data used for the analysis presented in this manuscript relies on previously published datasets, a list of which is available in the Supporting Information (Table S1), and are freely available either upon request to data owners or from a repository. We provide the full dataset used in the analysis in the Supporting Information (Table S4). Funding information: This work and KZ were supported by the Natural Environment Research Council and the ARIES Doctoral Training Partnership [grant number NE/S007334/1].
Uncontrolled Keywords:	sdg 13 - climate action ,/dk/atira/pure/sustainabledevelopmentgoals/climate_action
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Science Faculty of Science > School of Environmental Sciences University of East Anglia Research Groups/Centres > Theme - ClimateUEA
UEA Research Groups:	Faculty of Science > Research Groups > Organisms and the Environment Faculty of Science > Research Groups > Environmental Biology Faculty of Science > Research Centres > Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Conservation
Depositing User:	LivePure Connector
Date Deposited:	28 Apr 2025 12:30
Last Modified:	05 May 2025 00:10
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/99121
DOI:	10.1111/jbi.15127

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