Regional variability in extinction thresholds for forest birds in the north‐eastern United States: an examination of potential drivers using long‐term breeding bird atlas datasets

Hoek, Yntze van der; Wilson, Andrew; Renfrew, Rosalind B.; Walsh, Joan; Rodewald, Paul G.; Baldy, J.; Manne, Lisa L.

doi:10.1111/ddi.12327

Cited by 12 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 53 publications

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“…Many empirical studies also have found ecological thresholds within the range identified by our study. For example, Desrochers et al () show that > 50% habitat loss or conversion can lead to loss of bird species from regional assemblages in Ontario, Canada and van der Hoek et al () report bird extinction thresholds with 10–93% forest loss or conversion in northeastern United States. Although the identification of a single ‘magic’ (Matthews et al ) threshold value may be attractive from a conservation perspective (Johnson ), threshold values often demonstrate considerable variability even within taxonomic groups and simple landscapes (reviewed by Swift and Hannon ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Methods and models for identifying thresholds of habitat loss

Yin

Leroux

2016

Ecography

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There is mounting evidence that many taxa respond in non‐linear ways to perturbation (i.e. deviations from a natural trajectory brought on by an external agent), and many statistical, physical and ecological methods have been developed to detect the critical points or thresholds of perturbation. The majority of these methods define thresholds as the perturbation points causing abrupt ecological response, but in reality most species or ecosystems do not show a break point response but more gradual transitional change to perturbation. We develop a new method which delineates thresholds as a region in which the slope of the relationship between ecological response (y) and perturbation (x; e.g. habitat loss) is larger than 1: |dy/dx|≥ 1, where both x‐ and y‐axes are scaled to (0, 1) range. The lower end of threshold zones so defined is of particular ecological interest because it is the smallest x that may trigger impending catastrophic response to a small change in x. We derived two landscape models (edge length and the number of patches of species distribution) and two biodiversity models (endemics–area relationship and half‐population curve) to test this method. We applied our zonal thresholding method to these four models fit to empirical data of two forest plots to detect thresholds of species distribution to habitat loss. The two landscape metric models predict that no species could tolerate more than 40% of habitat loss and these thresholds can be much lower for relatively rare species with occupancy < 0.4 and for aggregated habitat loss compared to random habitat loss. The half‐population model leads to a similar threshold level of 40% habitat loss. Overall, we suggest the maximum permissible habitat loss threshold to be between 0–40%, depending on the pre‐disturbed occupancy (or abundance) of a species. This habitat loss threshold falls within the otherwise wide range of thresholds calculated from conventional methods. Our study contributes novel methods and models to quantify the effect of habitat loss on species distribution and diversity in landscapes with potential for conservation applications.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Methods and models for identifying thresholds of habitat loss

Yin

Leroux

2016

Ecography

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“…Anthropogenic land use and climate change are altering species distributions (Chen, Hill, Ohlemüller, Roy, & Thomas, ; Hickling, Roy, Hill, Fox, & Thomas, ; Parmesan, ; Parmesan & Yohe, ; Sparks, Roy, & Dennis, ; Van der Hoek, Renfrew, & Manne, ; Van der Hoek et al, ; Walther et al, ). Predicting how migratory species might respond to landscape level changes presents additional challenges as breeding and wintering habitats generally occur at geographically disjoint locations (Knudsen et al, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Anthropogenic land use and climate change are altering species distributions (Chen, Hill, Ohlemüller, Roy, & Thomas, 2011;Hickling, Roy, Hill, Fox, & Thomas, 2006;Parmesan, 2006;Parmesan & Yohe, 2003;Sparks, Roy, & Dennis, 2005;Van der Hoek, Renfrew, & Manne, 2013;Van der Hoek et al, 2015;Walther et al, 2002).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Differential winter and breeding range shifts: Implications for avian migration distances

Curley

Manne

Veit

2020

Diversity and Distributions

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Aim For many migratory avian species, winter and breeding habitats occur at geographically distinct locations. Disparate magnitudes and direction of shifts in wintering and breeding locations could lead to altered migration distances. We investigated how shifts in the centre of abundance (COA) of winter and breeding ranges have changed for 77 species of short‐distance migratory birds. We addressed whether species tracked their historical average temperature and precipitation conditions at their winter and breeding COA, using data from 1990 to 2015. Location North America. Methods We calculated the COA for winter and breeding ranges from the National Audubon Society's Christmas Bird Count and the North American Breeding Bird Survey. We regressed the annual change in distance (km) between the two annual COAs of each species as a proxy for change in migration distance. We constructed a series of generalized linear mixed models (GLMMs) to evaluate changes in average temperature and precipitation at the wintering and breeding COAs. Results Winter shifts in COA were predominantly northward. For most species, average temperature and precipitation that species experienced had not changed. Breeding shifts in COA varied in direction. For breeding season COAs, average temperature warmed, but average precipitation had not changed. Thirty‐one species significantly decreased their migration distances, mainly driven by northward shifts in the winter range. Ten species increased their migration distances. Main conclusions Winter and breeding range shifts in COA have not occurred at the same magnitude and direction and have therefore impacted migration distance. Our results suggest that wintering and breeding range shifts occur independently and under different climate pressures.

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“…Also, although the percentage of suitable habitat may be the most important and widely used variable, threshold responses may change with different landscape configurations such as the degree of fragmentation. Notably, some of these challenges have already been addressed (Jansson and Angelstam 1999, Villard et al 1999, Suarez-Rubio et al 2013, Van der Hoek et al 2015. We argue that the applicability of the threshold concept, even though the number of studies is increasing, may benefit from more refined analyses that include the matrix (Boesing et al 2018), and consider historical land use changes and other variables such as historical climate stability that help identify the mechanisms behind the responses.…”

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confidence: 95%

“…Even though there is an increasing array of literature involving thresholds with different taxonomic groups (Fig. 1), some controversies exist regarding their applicability, e.g., not all species in a community have the same responses (Lindenmayer et al 2005, Estavillo et al 2013, and the results of studies may not be transferable across regions, e.g., species may have different threshold responses in different locations (van der Hoek et al 2013). Also, although the percentage of suitable habitat may be the most important and widely used variable, threshold responses may change with different landscape configurations such as the degree of fragmentation.…”

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confidence: 99%

A review of threshold responses of birds to landscape changes across the world

et al. 2018

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Identifying the threshold of habitat cover beyond which species of birds are locally lost is useful for understanding the biological consequences of landscape changes. However, there is little consensus regarding the impact of landscape changes on the likelihood of species extinctions. We conducted a literature search using Scopus and ISI Web of Knowledge databases to identify studies where bird species were used to estimate threshold responses to landscape changes. We obtained a list of 31 papers published from 1994 to 2018, with 24 studies conducted at temperate latitudes and seven in tropical regions. Nineteen studies were based on species‐level assessments, and investigators used a variety of response variables such as probability of detection and occurrence to detect threshold responses. Eight studies were based on communities, and species richness and abundance were primarily used to detect threshold responses. Four studies included both communities and species‐level assessments. Methods used to identify threshold responses varied among studies, but most relied on either regression models to visually identify values from graphs or piecewise regression to estimate a specific threshold value. Although the limited number of studies and their variety of approaches and methods prevented a formal meta‐analysis, we found that mean threshold responses in studies that reported either a range or a single threshold value were 27.9% at temperate latitudes (range = 1.3–90%; N = 11) and 33.6% at tropical latitudes (range = 20–50%; N = 7). Considering only studies where single threshold values were reported, the mean habitat cover threshold was 11% for studies conducted at temperate latitudes (N = 3) and 29.5% for studies in the tropics (N = 4). These crude estimates suggest that tropical species might be more susceptible to habitat loss than temperate species. Although application of the threshold concept is still controversial, the number of studies using this approach is increasing because the results of such studies may have direct application to conservation strategies and restoration of landscapes for bird conservation.

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Regional variability in extinction thresholds for forest birds in the north‐eastern United States: an examination of potential drivers using long‐term breeding bird atlas datasets

Cited by 12 publications

References 53 publications

Methods and models for identifying thresholds of habitat loss

Methods and models for identifying thresholds of habitat loss

Differential winter and breeding range shifts: Implications for avian migration distances

A review of threshold responses of birds to landscape changes across the world

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