Data and climate variable selection from: Effects of density, species interactions and environmental stochasticity on the dynamics of British bird communities

Our knowledge of the factors affecting species abundances is mainly based
on time-series analyses of a few well-studied species at single or few
localities, but we know little about whether results from such analyses
can be extrapolated to the community level. We apply a Joint Species
Distribution Model to long-term time-series data on British bird
communities to examine the relative contribution of intra- and
interspecific density dependence at different spatial scales, as well as
the influence of environmental stochasticity, to spatio-temporal
interspecific variation in abundance. Intraspecific density dependence has
the major structuring effect on these bird communities. In addition,
environmental fluctuations affect spatiotemporal differences in abundance.
In contrast, species interactions had a minor impact on variation in
abundance. Thus, important drivers of single-species dynamics are also
strongly affecting dynamics of communities in time and space.