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Abstract
BackgroundClimatic warming predicts that species move their entire distribution poleward. Poleward movement of the ‘cold’ side of the distribution of species is empirically supported, but evidence of poleward movement at the ‘warm’ distributional side is relatively scarce.Methodology/Principal FindingFinland has, as the first country in the world, completed three national atlas surveys of breeding birds, which we here use to calculate the sizes and weighted mean latitudes of the national range of 114 southern and 34 northern bird species during three periods (1974–1979; 1986–1989; 2006–2010), each denoting species presence in approximately 3 800 10×10 km2 squares. We find strong evidence that southern species (breeding predominantly in central Europe) showed a latitudinal shift of 1.1–1.3 km/year poleward during all three pairwise comparisons between these atlases (covering 11, 20.5 and 31.5 years respectively). We find evidence of a latitudinal shift of 0.7–0.8 km/year poleward of northern boreal and Arctic species, but this shift was not found in all study periods and may have been influenced by increased effort put into the more recent surveys. Species showed no significant correlation in changes in range size and weighted mean latitude between the first (11 year) and second (20.5 year) period covered by consecutive atlases, suggesting weak phylogenetic signal and little scope of species characteristics in explaining latitudinal avian range changes.ConclusionsExtinction-driven avian range changes (at the ‘warm’ side) of a species' distribution occur at approximately half the rate of colonisation-driven range changes (at the ‘cold’ side), and its quantification therefore requires long-term monitoring data, possibly explaining why evidence for such changes is currently rare. A clear latitudinal shift in an assemblage of species may still harbour considerable temporal inconsistency in latitudinal movement on the species level. Understanding this inconsistency is important for predictive modelling of species composition in a changing world.
Highlights
Understanding factors regulating the distribution of organisms forms the core of ecology
We considered the Finnish range size and northern range margins of 114 bird species with a predominantly southern distribution in Finland and 34 species with a northern distribution in Finland
Almost all cells were surveyed during each atlas project, but the number of atlas cells surveyed increased in each consecutive atlas (Table 1)
Summary
Understanding factors regulating the distribution of organisms forms the core of ecology. One school of ecologists emphasize the role of abiotic factors, such as temperature, in determining whether an organism can establish a reproducing population at a given site [1], [2],[3] This Grinellian view is at the heart of species distribution models where present species occurrences are linked to climatic conditions and forward projections are generated on the basis of this information and climate change scenarios Experimental laboratory evidence underlines that when competing Drosophila species are considered, changes in distribution are not a simple function of changes in abiotic conditions and an element of unpredictability, caused by species interactions, dominates the system [9] This view implies that predictions may not be a straightforward resultant of changes in climate and that the consequence of warming for shifts in species’ distribution may be specific to the context (e.g. community of species). Poleward movement of the ‘cold’ side of the distribution of species is empirically supported, but evidence of poleward movement at the ‘warm’ distributional side is relatively scarce
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