Potential breeding distributions of U.S. birds predicted with both short-term variability and long-term average climate data

Climate conditions, such as temperature or precipitation averaged over several decades strongly affect species distributions, as evidenced by experimental results and a plethora of models demonstrating statistical relations between species occurrences and long-term climate averages. However, long-term averages can conceal climate changes that have occurred in recent decades and may not capture actual species occurrence well because the distributions of species, especially at the edges of their range, are typically dynamic and may respond strongly to short-term climate variability. Our goal here was to test whether bird occurrence models can be predicted by either covariates based on short-term climate variability or on long-term climate averages. We parameterized species distribution models (SDMs) based on either short-term variability or long-term average climate covariates for 320 bird species in the conterminous U.S., and tested whether any life-history trait-based guilds were partic...

诸如数十年平均气温、降水量在内的气候条件，会对物种分布产生强烈影响，这一点已得到实验结果以及大量模型的佐证——这些模型均揭示了物种出现记录与长期气候均值之间的统计关联。然而，长期气候均值会掩盖近数十年间发生的气候变化，且可能无法很好地反映物种的实际出现情况：这是因为物种分布通常处于动态变化之中，尤其是在分布范围的边缘地带，往往会对短期气候波动产生强烈响应。本研究旨在验证：鸟类出现模型能否基于短期气候波动相关的协变量，或是长期气候均值相关的协变量进行构建与预测。我们针对美国本土的320种鸟类，分别基于短期气候波动协变量与长期气候均值协变量构建了物种分布模型（Species Distribution Models，SDMs），并检验了基于生活史特征划分的功能群是否存在特定……