Which are the phenologically flexible species? A case study with common passerine birds

Abstract

One of the most consensual ecological effects of the current climate warming is the alteration of the environmental timing of ecosystems. Phenological shifts, at different levels of food webs, are predicted to have major effects on species assemblages. Indeed it is unlikely that all species should be able to respond to the phenological shifts of their environment evenly. Yet questions remain about the specific traits that predict the ability of a species to track the temporal fluctuations of its environment. In this study, we use data from the French Constant Effort Site ringing program over a 20 years period (1989–2008) to estimate the ability of 20 common passerine species to adjust their breeding phenology to spring temperature variations. We show that the sensitivity of species breeding phenology to climate relates to species mean migration distance, species’ thermal and habitat niche breadth and brain mass. Species with the broadest ecological and thermal niches, the shortest mean migration distances and the largest brains were most able to adjust their breeding phenology to temperature variations. Our results thus identify long distance migrants and ecological specialists as species that could most suffer from the future expected climate change and suggests phenological adjustment as one possible mechanism underlying the replacement of specialist species by more generalist ones, the so called functional biotic homogenization.