Variable precipitation leads to dynamic range limits of forest songbirds at a forest-grassland ecotone.

ABSTRACT: Boundaries between vegetation types, known as ecotones, can be dynamic in response to climatic changes. The North American Great Plains includes a forest-grassland ecotone in the southcentral United States that has expanded and contracted in recent decades in response to historical periods of drought and pluvial conditions. This dynamic region also marks a western distributional limit for many passerine birds that typically breed in forests of the eastern United States. To better understand the influence that variability can exert on broad-scale biodiversity, we explored historical longitudinal shifts in the western extent of breeding ranges of eastern forest songbirds in response to the variable climate of the southern Great Plains. We used climatic niche modeling to estimate current dist

SUBMITTER: Sinnott EA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8366877 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature