Current analogues of future climate indicate the likely response of a sensitive montane tropical avifauna to a warming world.

ABSTRACT: Among birds, tropical montane species are likely to be among the most vulnerable to climate change, yet little is known about how climate drives their distributions, nor how to predict their likely responses to temperature increases. Correlative models of species' environmental niches have been widely used to predict changes in distribution, but direct tests of the relationship between key variables, such as temperature, and species' actual distributions are few. In the absence of historical data with which to compare observations and detect shifts, space-for-time substitutions, where warmer locations are used as analogues of future conditions, offer an opportunity to test for species' responses to climate. We collected density data for rainforest birds across elevational gradients in nort

SUBMITTER: Anderson AS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3729957 | biostudies-literature | 2013

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature