Species-specific ecological traits, phylogeny, and geography underpin vulnerability to population declines for North American birds

Species declines and extinctions characterize the Anthropocene. Determining species vulnerability to decline, and where and how to mitigate threats, are paramount for effective conservation. We hypothesized that species with shared ecological traits also share threats, and therefore may experience similar population trends. Here, we used a Bayesian modeling framework to test whether phylogeny, geography, and 22 ecological traits predict regional population trends for 380 North American bird species. Groups like blackbirds, warblers, and shorebirds, as well as species occupying Bird Conservation Regions at more extreme latitudes in North America, exhibited negative population trends, while groups such as ducks, raptors, and waders, as well as species occupying more inland Bird Conservation Regions, exhibited positive trends. Specifically, we found that in addition to phylogeny and breeding geography, multiple ecological traits contributed to explaining variation in regional population tr..., For more detail refer the associated manuscript., Applications that are needed: R and RStudio., This README file was generated on 2023-09-07 by Henry C. Stevens.

# General Information

1. Title: Dataset for manuscript \"Species-specific ecological traits, phylogeny, and geography underpin vulnerability to population declines for North American birds\"
2. Corresponding author:
Henry C. Stevens, Georgetown University
[e-mail]
3. Basic description:
This dataset contains all of the data and code necessary to reproduce the analyses in the Ornithological Applications article \"Species-specific ecological traits, phylogeny, and geography underpin vulnerability to population declines for North American birds\". Each data file associates North American bird species and some number of their relevant ecological traits. Combined, these data files act as the master trait dataset that we analyze and model for the manuscript.

# Data overview

Data file list:

1. ACAD.csv
2. BBS\_BCR\_shrunken\_trends.csv
3. bird\_diets.csv
4. migration-distance.csv
5. newtrends.csv
6. s...