Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: Climate change is shifting the phenology of migratory animals earlier; yet an understanding of how climate change leads to variable shifts across populations, species and communities remains hampered by limited spatial and taxonomic sampling. In this study, we used a hierarchical Bayesian model to analyse 88,965 site-specific arrival dates from 222 bird species over 21 years to investigate the role of temperature, snowpack, precipitation, the El-Niño/Southern Oscillation and the North Atlantic Oscillation on the spring arrival timing of Nearctic birds. Interannual variation in bird arrival on breeding grounds was most strongly explained by temperature and snowpack, and less strongly by precipitation and climate oscillations. Sensitivity of arrival timing to climatic variation exhibited spatial nonstationarity, being highly variable within and across species. A high degree of heterogeneity in phenological sensitivity suggests diverging responses to ongoing climatic changes at the population, species and community scale, with potentially negative demographic and ecological consequences.
Source: Ecology Letters
DOI: 10.1111/ele.14526
Language: English
Topic: Avian ecology and behavior
Subfield: Ecology
Field: Environmental Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
SDG: Climate action
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $5,250
Awards: CAREER: Community Ecology of Bird Migration - Co-Occurring Migrations and Interspecific Interactions, Collaborative Proposal: MSB-FRA: Causes, consequences, and cross-scale linkages of environment-driven phenological mismatch across three trophic levels, Collaborative Proposal: MSB-FRA: Causes, consequences, and cross-scale linkages of environment-driven phenological mismatch across three trophic levels, G7880304135, G8277481175
OpenAlex ID: W4403183243