Ecological drivers of global gradients in avian dispersal inferred from wing morphology

Sheard, Catherine; Neate‐Clegg, Montague H. C.; Alioravainen, Nico; Jones, Samuel; Vincent, Claire; MacGregor, Hannah E. A.; Bregman, Tom P.; Claramunt, Santiago; Tobias, Joe

doi:10.1038/s41467-020-16313-6

Cited by 286 publications

(466 citation statements)

References 74 publications

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“…B 287: 20201450 reported but is not ubiquitous in the literature. While there are studies that demonstrate a positive relationship between range size and dispersal ability [20,22,[26][27][28], others have shown no effect [21,75] or a reduced effect compared to post-dispersal survivorship traits [76]. The absence of a relationship has been explained by the small effect dispersal has when considering the evolutionary time scale in which ranges are attained [21].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dispersal ability correlates with range size in Amazonian habitat-restricted birds

et al. 2020

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Understanding how species attain their geographical distributions and identifying traits correlated with range size are important objectives in biogeography, evolutionary biology and biodiversity conservation. Despite much effort, results have been varied and general trends have been slow to emerge. Studying species pools that occupy specific habitats, rather than clades or large groupings of species occupying diverse habitats, may better identify ranges size correlates and be more informative for conservation programmes in a rapidly changing world. We evaluated correlations between a set of organismal traits and range size in bird species from Amazonian white-sand ecosystems. We assessed if results are consistent when using different data sources for phylogenetic and range hypotheses. We found that dispersal ability, as measured by the hand-wing index, was correlated with range size in both white-sand birds and their non-white-sand sister taxa. White-sand birds had smaller ranges on average than their sister taxa. The results were similar and robust to the different data sources. Our results suggest that the patchiness of white-sand ecosystems limits species’ ability to reach new habitat islands and establish new populations.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dispersal ability correlates with range size in Amazonian habitat-restricted birds

et al. 2020

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“…For latitude, we calculated the median latitude for each species in our dataset based on standard geographical range polygons from BirdLife International (BirdLife International 2018). Following numerous previous studies (e.g., Weir & Schluter 2007;Cooney et al 2017b;Sheard et al 2020), we focused solely on the breeding distribution, where interactions over food and territories are likely most intense, and averaged the latitude for each pair of sister species to produce a midpoint latitude for the pair. Using these midpoint latitudes, we then classified each sister pair as tropical (< 23.4°; N = 800) or temperate (> 23.4°; N = 341).…”

Section: Sister Pair Selection and Geographic Variablesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The latitudinal gradient in rates of evolution for bird beaks, a species interaction trait

Freeman

Schluter

Tobias

2020

Preprint

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Where is evolution fastest? The biotic interactions hypothesis proposes that greater species richness creates more ecological opportunity, driving faster evolution at low latitudes, whereas the “empty niches” hypothesis proposes that ecological opportunity is greater where diversity is low, spurring faster evolution at high latitudes. Here we test these contrasting predictions by analyzing rates of bird beak evolution for a global dataset of 1141 sister pairs of birds. We find that beak size evolves at similar rates across latitudes, while beak shape evolves faster in the temperate zone, consistent with the empty niches hypothesis. By comparing rates of evolution in sympatric versus allopatric sister lineages, we also find evidence that character displacement is similar between latitudes. Our analyses focusing on recent speciation events finds that drivers of evolutionary diversification are more potent at higher latitudes, thus calling into question multiple hypotheses invoking faster tropical evolution to explain the latitudinal diversity gradient.

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“…Together, these morphological traits provide and index of avian dispersal ability and trophic niche (Claramunt et al, 2012;Tobias et al, 2014;Pigot et al, 2020). In contrast, previous global studies have mainly been limited to a single continuous ecological traitbody masswhich is a poor predictor of avian dispersal (Sheard et al 2020) and only weakly informative about ecological niche differences (Pigot et al, 2020). We used this comprehensive trait dataset to calculate the functional diversity of future species assemblages estimated using recent species range projections (Hof et al, 2018) with a time horizon (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Global Impacts of Climate Change on Avian Functional Diversity

Stewart

Voskamp

Biber

et al. 2020

Preprint

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Climate change is predicted to drive geographical range shifts in many taxa, leading to the formation of novel species assemblages and fluctuations in species richness worldwide. However, the effect of these changes on functional diversity is not yet fully understood, in part because comprehensive species-level trait data are generally lacking at global scales. Here we use morphometric and ecological trait data for 8269 terrestrial bird species to compare functional diversity (FD) of current and future bird assemblages under a medium emissions scenario. We show that future assemblages are likely to undergo substantial shifts in trait structure, with the direction and magnitude of these shifts varying with geographical location and trophic guild. Specifically, invertivore FD is projected to increase at higher latitudes with concurrent losses at mid-latitudes, reflecting poleward shifts in range, whereas frugivore FD is projected to fluctuate in many tropical regions with major declines in much of South America and New Guinea. We show that these projected changes in FD are generally greater than expected from changing species richness alone, indicating that projected FD changes are primarily driven by the loss or gain of functionally distinct species. Our findings suggest that climate change will drive continental-scale shifts in avian functional diversity, with potentially far-reaching implications for ecosystem functions and resilience.

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Ecological drivers of global gradients in avian dispersal inferred from wing morphology

Cited by 286 publications

References 74 publications

Dispersal ability correlates with range size in Amazonian habitat-restricted birds

Dispersal ability correlates with range size in Amazonian habitat-restricted birds

The latitudinal gradient in rates of evolution for bird beaks, a species interaction trait

Global Impacts of Climate Change on Avian Functional Diversity

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