Avian responses to climate extremes: insights into abundance curves and species sensitivity using the UK Breeding Bird Survey

Abstract

Climate change remains one of the most urgent challenges for biodiversity conservation. Recent studies have highlighted that climate extremes (CLEXs) can lead to widespread and negative effects across all taxa and ecological levels, but most of these studies are based on short-term periods and small spatial scales and lack a multi-species approach. Here, using generalised additive models (GAMs) and the UK Breeding Bird Survey (BBS), we described response curves for the abundance of 100 resident bird species over large spatial and temporal scales and identified the species showing a greater sensitivity to CLEXs. We used five climatic indices computed at 1-km spatial resolution as proxies of CLEXs during the winter or breeding season and considered both 1- and 2-year lagged effects. The results demonstrated widespread and significant effects of CLEXs on bird abundances at both time lags and in both seasons. Winter frost days (FD0), summer days (SU25) during the breeding season and simple precipitation intensity index (SDII) during the breeding season mainly showed negative effects. Daily temperature range (DTR) in both winter and breeding season and dry days (DD) during the breeding season led to diversified responses across the species, with a prevalence of positive effects. A large proportion of species showed a high sensitivity to CLEXs, highlighting that these species may deserve attention in future studies aimed at biodiversity conservation. We demonstrated that CLEXs can represent a significant driver affecting population abundances over large spatial and temporal scales, emphasising the need for understanding mechanistic processes at the basis of the observed effects.