Short-billed Dowitcher (Limnodromus griseus hendersoni) nesting habitat preferences in Churchill, Manitoba, Canada: Habitat modelling and climate change implications

Climate change poses a threat to subarctic ecosystems and subarctic breeding shorebirds may already be experiencing loss of breeding habitat due to the changing landscape. In this study, we focus on the Short-Billed Dowitcher Limnodromus griseus hendersoni (Rowan, 1932), a species of shorebird that breeds in the subarctic tundra of Canada, around Churchill, Manitoba. We use Maxent, a presence-only species distribution model, to identify its breeding habitat preferences and visualize its distribution. We also estimate the impact of climate change on its breeding habitat distribution. At a local scale, nest sites were mostly predicted by vegetation structure, suggesting that this parameter is associated with nesting requirements. A regional scale analysis highlighted that terrain roughness and elevation are associated with breeding habitat requirements of the species as well as climatic conditions throughout the year. Different climate change scenarios predicted significant modification in potential breeding habitat. Modelling was based on a relatively small number of observations because Short-billed Dowitcher nests are both uncommon on the landscape and highly cryptic. Thus, our findings should be interpreted with caution. Nonetheless, this study provides valuable insights into the breeding biology of a poorly studied shorebird species at one of their few monitored breeding sites.