Demography–environment relationships improve mechanistic understanding of range dynamics under climate change

ABSTRACT: Species respond to climate change with range and abundance dynamics. To better explain and predict them, we need a mechanistic understanding of how the underlying demographic processes are shaped by climatic conditions. Here, we aim to infer demography–climate relationships from distribution and abundance data. For this, we developed spatially explicit, process-based models for eight Swiss breeding bird populations. These jointly consider dispersal, population dynamics and the climate-dependence of three demographic processes—juvenile survival, adult survival and fecundity. The models were calibrated to 267 nationwide abundance time series in a Bayesian framework. The fitted models showed moderate to excellent goodness-of-fit and discriminatory power. The most influential climatic predicto

SUBMITTER: Malchow A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10225853 | biostudies-literature | 2023 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature