Abstract
Abstract. Understanding of the relationships between bird species and environment facilitates protecting avian biodiversity and maintaining nature sustaining. However, the effects of many climatic factors on bird richness have not been fully grasped. To fill this gap, this study investigated the relationships between the richness of three typical North American breeding bird species and three climatic factors at the monthly scale. Based on the North American Breeding Bird Survey (BBS) data during 1967–2014, the relationships between the numbers of Carolina wren, Cerulean warbler, and Red-bellied woodpecker and the three climatic factors of precipitation, vapor pressure, and potential evapotranspiration were examined using the method of Pearson linear regression analysis. The results indicated that the three climatic factors have correlations with the richness of the breeding bird species but in different modes, e.g., strong correlations for the non-migratory species but weak correlations for the migratory species.
Highlights
Understanding of the interactions between various bird species and their environments is increasingly highlighted (e.g., Sauer et al, 1994; Link and Sauer, 1998; Bled et al, 2013; Goetz et al, 2014), especially in the context of global change
This study investigated the relationships between the richness of different bird species and the values of different hydrology-typed climatic factors, which were compiled at the monthly scales both
We used the data of bird observation from the North American Breeding Bird Survey (BBS), which started in 1966 for the purpose of characterizing North American avian population changes
Summary
Understanding of the interactions between various bird species and their environments is increasingly highlighted (e.g., Sauer et al, 1994; Link and Sauer, 1998; Bled et al, 2013; Goetz et al, 2014), especially in the context of global change. The previous studies focusing on the interactions of bird species richness and environmental factors were generally conducted at the annual scales (Scott et al, 1994; Florent et al, 2013). This temporal scale cannot characterize the changes of the richness of different bird species along seasons. Thereby, the mechanisms underlying the influence and response between bird species richness and climatic factors at finer temporal scales have been unclear yet, at the continental scales To address these gaps, this study investigated the relationships between the richness of different bird species and the values of different hydrology-typed climatic factors, which were compiled at the monthly scales both. The optimal relationship determined for each bird species can reveal the dependence of that species to the related climatic factor
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