Forest microclimate and composition mediate long-term trends of breeding bird populations.

ABSTRACT: Climate change is contributing to biodiversity redistributions and species declines. However, cooler microclimate conditions provided by old-growth forest structures compared with surrounding open or younger forests have been hypothesized to provide thermal refugia for species that are sensitive to climate warming and dampen the negative effects of warming on population trends of animals (i.e., the microclimate buffering hypothesis). In addition to thermal refugia, the compositional and structural diversity of old-growth forest vegetation itself may provide resources to species that are less available in forests with simpler structure (i.e., the insurance hypothesis). We used 8 years of breeding bird abundance data from a forested watershed, accompanied with sub-canopy temperature data, an

SUBMITTER: Kim H 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9825929 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature