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The existence of patterns in population dynamics across species geographic ranges and climatic niches is a pervasive idea in ecology. Population variability (i.e. temporal variability in population density) should hypothetically increase near range edges or niche limits because of less suitable environments in these areas, but the occurrence of such patterns remains largely unexplored. Further, fluctuations in temperature could pose demographic constraints on populations and also influence their variability. We used Breeding Bird Survey data to show that the population variability of 97 resident North American birds consistently increases towards their niche limits and in areas with more variable temperatures, but not towards their geographic range edges. However, our model has limited explanatory power, and phylogenetic history and species traits could not explain these results. These findings suggest that other factors, such as biotic interactions and resource availability, might be more important drivers of population variability in resident North American birds.
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Climatic versus biotic drivers' effect on fitness varies with range size but not position within range in terrestrial plants
Abstract All populations are affected by multiple environmental drivers, including climatic drivers such as temperature or precipitation and biotic drivers such as herbivory or mutualisms. The relative response of a population to each driver is critical to prioritizing threat mitigation for conservation and to understanding whether climatic or biotic drivers most strongly affect fitness. However, the importance of different drivers can vary dramatically across species and across populations of the same species. Theory suggests that the response to climatic versus biotic drivers can be affected by both the species' fundamental niche breadth and the latitude of the population at which the response is measured. However, we have few tests of how these two factors affect relative response to drivers separately, let alone tests of how niche breadth and latitude together influence responses. Here, we use a meta‐analysis of published studies on population response to climatic and biotic drivers in terrestrial plants, combined with estimates of climatic niche breadth and position within climatic niche derived from herbarium records, to show that species' niche breadth is the primary determinant of response to climatic versus biotic drivers. Namely, we find that response to climatic drivers changes only minimally with increasing niche breadth, while response to biotic drivers increases with niche breadth. We see similar relationships when considering range size instead of niche breadth. Surprisingly, we find no effects of latitude on the relative effect of climatic versus biotic drivers. Our work suggests that populations of species with small and large ranges experience similar extirpation risks due to the negative impacts of climate change. By contrast, populations of species with large (but not small) ranges may be highly susceptible to changes in densities or distributions of interacting species.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1753980
- PAR ID:
- 10635573
- Publisher / Repository:
- Ecological Monographs
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Ecological Monographs
- Volume:
- 95
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 0012-9615
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1002/ecm.1640
