The future distribution of wetland birds breeding in Europe validated against observed changes in distribution

Abstract

Wetland bird species have been declining in population size worldwide as climate warming and land-use change affect their suitable habitats. We used species distribution models (SDMs) to predict changes in range dynamics for 64 non-passerine wetland birds breeding in Europe, including range size, position of centroid, and margins. We fitted the SDMs with data collected for the first European Breeding Bird Atlas (EBBA1) and climate and land-use data to predict distributional changes over a century (the 1970s–2070s). The predicted annual changes were then compared to observed annual changes in range size and range centroid over a time period of 30 years using data from the second European Breeding Bird Atlas (EBBA2). Our models successfully predicted ca. 75% of the 64 bird species to contract their breeding range in the future, while the remaining species (mostly southerly breeding species) were predicted to expand their breeding ranges northward. The northern margins of southerly species and southern margins of northerly species, both, predicted to shift northward. Predicted changes in range size and shifts in range centroids were broadly positively associated with the observed changes, although some species deviated markedly from the predictions. The predicted average shift in core distributions was ca. 5 km/year towards the north (5% Northeast, 45% North, and 40% Northwest), compared to a slower observed average shift of ca. 3.9 km/year. Predicted changes in range centroids were generally larger than observed changes, which suggests that bird distribution changes may lag behind environmental changes leading to “climate debt. We suggest that predictions of SDMs should be viewed as qualitative rather than quantitative outcomes, indicating that care should be taken concerning single species. Still, our results highlight the urgent need for management actions such as wetland creation and restoration to improve wetland birds' resilience to the expected environmental changes in the future.

Decomposing the spatial and temporal effects of climate on bird populations in northern European mountains

“…SDM forecasts with static covariates and space‐for‐time substitution have accurately predicted future species' distribution for some species, but have performed poorly for others (Araujo et al, 2005 ; Kharouba et al, 2009 ; Pearman et al, 2008 ; Soultan et al, 2022 ). Moreover, even for SDMs that accurately predicted future species distributions, prediction accuracies for sites at which distribution changes occurred were often low suggesting that improvements to forecasting based on SDMs are needed (Briscoe et al, 2021 ; Illán et al, 2014 ; Rapacciuolo et al, 2012 ).…”

“…SDM forecasts with static covariates and space-for-time substitution have accurately predicted future species' distribution for some species, but have performed poorly for others (Araujo et al, 2005;Kharouba et al, 2009;Pearman et al, 2008;Soultan et al, 2022).…”

“…A spatial climate difference associated with variation in occurrence or abundance of a species is assumed to have the same effect as an equivalent change in climate through time at a single location. SDMs built with data from one time period and forecast or hindcast to a different period have given robust spatial predictions, but exceptions are common across a range of taxa, including birds (Araujo et al, 2005 ; Soultan et al, 2022 ), mammals (Davis et al, 2014 ), butterflies (Kharouba et al, 2009 ), and plants (Dobrowski et al, 2011 ; Pearman et al, 2008 ; Pearson et al, 2006 ; Veloz et al, 2012 ; Worth et al, 2014 ). Moreover, even for SDMs that accurately predicted future species distributions, occurrences or abundances at the sites where change occurred were often poorly predicted (Briscoe et al, 2021 ; Illán et al, 2014 ; Rapacciuolo et al, 2012 ).…”

Space-for-time substitutions in climate change ecology and evolution

“…Nonetheless, a biotic lag can be inferred by projecting ENMs calibrated on past data to the present day; where distribution shifts are in the direction but not of the magnitude projected it may suggest a contemporary biotic lag (Fig. 2b) (Lewthwaite et al, 2018;Soultan et al, 2022). Such biotic lags can also be quantified in terms of spatial distance (distance of biotic lag; Fig.…”

Global warming and avifauna from the Argeş River dam basins (Southern Romania) – long term study case

“…Particularly, the waterbirds show a high degree of adaptability to these challenges, because they establish new quarters of wintering (Fox et al, 2019). Also, the displacement of the breeding range for some wetland species was documented as a consequence of the changes of the latitudinal temperature and of the corresponding changed pattern of precipitations (Soultan et al, 2022), though the wintering bird communities are tracking the climate change faster than the breeding communities (Lehikoinen et al, 2021). A recent study on the European birds revealed that the rising temperatures are affecting even the morphology of the birds, while some species reduced their body size and other increased it (McLean et al, 2022).…”