Habitat loss and thermal tolerances influence the sensitivity of resident bird populations to winter weather at regional scales

1. Climate change and habitat loss pose the greatest contemporary threats to biodiversity, but their impacts on populations largely vary across species. These differential responses could be caused by complex interactions between landscape and climate change and species-specific sensitivities.

2. Understanding the factors that determine which species are most vulnerable to the synergistic effects of climate change and habitat loss is a high conservation priority. Here, we ask (a) whether and to what extent land cover moderates the impacts of winter weather on population dynamics of wintering birds, and (b) what role species’ physiology might play in modifying their responses to changing weather conditions.

3. To address these questions, we used thousands of observations collected by citizen scientists participating in Project FeederWatch to build dynamic occupancy models for 14 species of wintering birds.

4. Populations of wintering birds were more dynamic, having higher rates ...