Latitude-specific responses of European birds’ population growth rates to temperature and water availability

Climate limits the distribution of species and varies along a latitudinal gradient. However, studies relating climate variation to species population growth rates in different climatic zones while taking into account species’ ecological traits are scarce. We assessed species population responses to the main climatic constraints at a continental scale by studying how precipitation and temperature at different latitudes influence interannual growth rates while considering species’ life-history traits. We gathered data on the abundance of 141 European breeding bird species from national breeding bird monitoring schemes in the Mediterranean (Catalonia, NE Spain), temperate (Czech Republic), and boreal (Sweden) climatic zones for the period 2002–2022. We used generalized linear models to relate the interannual population growth rates of bird species to spring and winter temperature, water availability and heavy rainfall in the breeding season. We considered migration strategy as a covariate ..., , , # Code and data for: Latitude-specific responses of European birds' population growth rates to temperature and water availability

Data and R script allowing to reproduce the modelling in the accompanied journal article. The models are stored for convenience. All files are available in Climate_growth_rate.zip.

## **Description of the data and file structure**

### File tree

* data
* model

### *Data*

`dt_growth_r_clim.csv` Data set containing the following variables:

* `EURING` = bird species code
* `Spec_name` = bird species name
* `Reg` = breeding region, i.e., MED = Mediterranean, CONT = Continental, S_BOR = Southern Boreal, N_BOR = Northern Boreal
* `Year` = year corresponding to breeding season (2002 to 2021)
* `Growth_r` = interannual population growth rate (ratio of annual population indices in year t+1 and t)
* `Growth_r_SE` = standard error of population growth rate
* `Dens` = population density (log-transformed annual population index)
* `Dens_SE` = standard error of popul...,