A test of niche centrality as a determinant of population trends and conservation status in threatened and endangered North American birds

Abstract

Abundance and other aspects of population ecology have long been known to contribute to shaping the geography of species' distributions. In particular, abundance patterns have recently been shown to negatively correlate with environmental distance from conditions in the center of a species' abiotic niche, rather than vary with distance from the geographic center of a species' distribution. We tested for such associations across 8 species of endangered or threatened bird species in North America using population trend data derived from > 4 decades of North American Breeding Bird Surveys. Although we found no consistent overall pattern, we did observe negative population trends at conditions that were the most extreme within species' niches. This suggests that niche peripherality is a relevant factor to consider in conservation planning. Specifically, environmentally peripheral sites may be poor places in which to protect populations of endangered and threatened species, irrespective of how centrally they may occur within species' geographic distributions.

Applying surrogate species presences to correct sample bias in species distribution models: a case study using the Pilbara population of the Northern Quoll

“…SDMs have been used to identify critical habitats for species with greatly reduced distributions (Hamilton et al 2015;Jetz and Freckleton 2015;Manthey et al 2015), provide potential translocation sites for species based on known habitat requirements (Adhikari et al 2012) and predict the movement of invasive species across landscapes under different scenarios (Kearney et al 2008;Elith et al 2010). Spatially explicit probability of presence, or prediction of occurrence maps, generated using SDM algorithms, have been used to inform conservation planning and habitat management at both coarse and fine scales.…”

Plateau: a new method for ecologically plausible climate envelopes for species distribution modelling

“…While the sharp edges at the top of the envelope might seem unrealistic, in practice there may be very little to choose in terms of quality of fit between these and smoother corners; however, there is clear support for our proposed envelope shape in Manthey et al . () and in Kriticos et al . ().…”

Anthropogenic disturbance and habitat loss for the red-listed Asiatic black bear ( Ursus thibetanus ): Using ecological niche modeling and nighttime light satellite imagery

“…Very generally, populations living under ideal environmental conditions have higher reproductive rates, abundances, and genetic diversity compared to populations living under more extreme environmental conditions (Lira-Noriega and Manthey, 2014;Martínez-Meyer et al, 2012). Hence, protected areas should be designed to consider the ideal environmental conditions for the species in question (Manthey et al, 2015). Our exploration of the most climatically-suitable areas that are also the least perturbed anthropogenically may provide insight into how anthropogenic disturbance affects isolation in bears (Malcolm et al, 2014;Noyce and Garshelis, 2014;Fig.…”