Related Experiment Video
Updated: Sep 4, 2025
04:55
Using a Thermal Camera to Measure Heat Loss Through Bird Feather Coats
Published on: June 17, 2020
3.6K
Increasing climatic decoupling of bird abundances and distributions
Duarte S Viana1,2,3, Jonathan M Chase4,5
1German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany. dviana@ebd.csic.es.
Nature Ecology & Evolution
|July 14, 2022
Summary
North American birds are increasingly mismatched with their changing climate. This climatic decoupling is linked to species traits and is more pronounced in declining bird populations, potentially worsening their outlook.
Area of Science:
- Ecology
- Climate Change Biology
- Conservation Science
Background:
- Species distributions and abundances are shifting due to climate change and human activities.
- Understanding how species track their optimal climate conditions over time is crucial but remains poorly understood.
Purpose of the Study:
- To quantify temporal trends in climate matching for North American bird species over 30 years.
- To investigate if geographical variations in climate/land use change rates or species traits explain differences in these trends.
Main Methods:
- Analysis of a continental-scale, 30-year time series of North American bird data.
- Quantification of temporal trends in species' climate matching.
- Statistical testing of relationships between climate matching trends, rates of environmental change, and species traits.
Main Results:
- Species' abundances and distributions are increasingly decoupled from their changing climate.
- Trends in climate matching varied among species and were related to ecological traits, especially habitat specialization.
- Rates of climate and land use change did not explain variation in climate matching trends.
- Climatic decoupling was more severe in declining bird populations, including threatened species.
Conclusions:
- Bird species are struggling to keep pace with rapid climate change, leading to a growing mismatch with their optimal climatic conditions.
- Habitat specialization is a key factor influencing a species' ability to maintain climate matching.
- The observed climatic decoupling in declining species may create a negative feedback loop, exacerbating population declines through increased exposure to suboptimal climates.
Related Concept Videos
02:07Conservation of Declining Populations
9.7K
Conservation of declining population focuses on ways of detecting, diagnosing, and halting a population decline. The approach uses methods to prevent populations from going extinct.
9.7K
01:50Global Climate Change
24.7K
Throughout its ~4.5 billion year history, the Earth has experienced periods of warming and cooling. However, the current drastic increase in global temperatures is well outside of the Earth’s cyclic norms, and evidence for human-caused global climate change is compelling. Paleoclimatology, the study of ancient climate conditions, provides ample evidence for human-caused global climate change by comparing recent conditions with those in the past.
24.7K
01:50Threats to Biodiversity
22.8K
There have been five major extinction events throughout geological history, resulting in the elimination of biodiversity, followed by a rebound of species that adapted to the new conditions. In the current geological epoch, the Holocene, there is a sixth extinction event in progress. This mass extinction has been attributed to human activities and is thus provisionally called the Anthropocene. In 2019 the human population reached 7.7 billion people and is projected to comprise 10 billion by...
22.8K
01:16What is Climate?
18.8K
Climate refers to the prevailing weather conditions in a specific area over an extended period. As the saying goes, “Climate is what you expect. Weather is what you get.” Climate is influenced by geographic factors, such as latitude, terrain, and proximity to bodies of water.
18.8K
02:31Habitat Fragmentation
17.8K
Habitat fragmentation describes the division of a more extensive, continuous habitat into smaller, discontinuous areas. Human activities such as land conversion, as well as slower geological processes leading to changes in the physical environment, are the two leading causes of habitat fragmentation. The fragmentation process typically follows the same steps: perforation, dissection, fragmentation, shrinkage, and attrition.
17.8K
01:21Frequency-dependent Selection
22.2K
When the fitness of a trait is influenced by how common it is (i.e., its frequency) relative to different traits within a population, this is referred to as frequency-dependent selection. Frequency-dependent selection may occur between species or within a single species. This type of selection can either be positive—with more common phenotypes having higher fitness—or negative, with rarer phenotypes conferring increased fitness.
22.2K