Twentieth century turnover of Mexican endemic avifaunas: Landscape change versus climate drivers

For conservation decision making, species' geographic distributions are mapped using various approaches. Some such efforts have downscaled versions of coarse-resolution extent-of-occurrence maps to fine resolutions for conservation planning. We examined the quality of the extent-of-occurrence maps as range summaries and the utility of refining those maps into fine-resolution distributional hypotheses. Extent-of-occurrence maps tend to be overly simple, omit many known and well-documented populations, and likely frequently include many areas not holding populations. Refinement steps involve typological assumptions about habitat preferences and elevational ranges of species, which can introduce substantial error in estimates of species' true areas of distribution. However, no model-evaluation steps are taken to assess the predictive ability of these models, so model inaccuracies are not noticed. Whereas range summaries derived by these methods may be useful in coarse-grained, global-extent studies, their continued use in on-the-ground conservation applications at fine spatial resolutions is not advisable in light of reliance on assumptions, lack of real spatial resolution, and lack of testing. In contrast, data-driven techniques that integrate primary data on biodiversity occurrence with remotely sensed data that summarize environmental dimensions (i.e., ecological niche modeling or species distribution modeling) offer data-driven solutions based on a minimum of assumptions that can be evaluated and validated quantitatively to offer a well-founded, widely accepted method for summarizing species' distributional patterns for conservation applications.

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“…; Peterson et al. ) and can be analyzed and interpreted to create useful, detailed information about species’ occurrences.…”

Section: Case Study Of Black‐throated Jaymentioning

confidence: 99%

Assumption‐versus data‐based approaches to summarizing species’ ranges

Peterson

Navarro‐Sigüenza

Gordillo

2016

Conservation Biology

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“…Similarly, current global warming and human activities are also affecting the evolution and distribution of living organisms worldwide (e.g. [9, 10]). Long distance migratory bird species are particularly sensitive to global climate change; their migration routes and timing have shifted drastically during the past decades [11, 12], mainly as a consequence of phenological responses to the rising temperatures [13].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Genomic evidence of demographic fluctuations and lack of genetic structure across flyways in a long distance migrant, the European turtle dove

et al. 2016

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BackgroundUnderstanding how past climatic oscillations have affected organismic evolution will help predict the impact that current climate change has on living organisms. The European turtle dove, Streptopelia turtur, is a warm-temperature adapted species and a long distance migrant that uses multiple flyways to move between Europe and Africa. Despite being abundant, it is categorized as vulnerable because of a long-term demographic decline. We studied the demographic history and population genetic structure of the European turtle dove using genomic data and mitochondrial DNA sequences from individuals sampled across Europe, and performing paleoclimatic niche modelling simulations.ResultsOverall our data suggest that this species is panmictic across Europe, and is not genetically structured across flyways. We found the genetic signatures of demographic fluctuations, inferring an effective population size (Ne) expansion that occurred between the late Pleistocene and early Holocene, followed by a decrease in the Ne that started between the mid Holocene and the present. Our niche modelling analyses suggest that the variations in the Ne are coincident with recent changes in the availability of suitable habitat.ConclusionsWe argue that the European turtle dove is prone to undergo demographic fluctuations, a trait that makes it sensitive to anthropogenic impacts, especially when its numbers are decreasing. Also, considering the lack of genetic structure, we suggest all populations across Europe are equally relevant for conservation.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12862-016-0817-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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“…More recently, Peterson et al. () provided detailed comparisons of bird species’ distributions between the middle 20th century and the present, and demonstrated such distributional shifts concretely. For example, new detections of endemic species were rather few, whereas endemic species losses were detected across the Mexican Plateau, Transvolcanic Belt, Isthmus of Tehuantepec, and in eastern Tabasco, and overall endemic species turnover suggested major avifaunal changes across the country (Peterson et al.…”

Section: Conservation Implementationmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…Large gaps and geographic unevenness remain in the spatial extent of knowledge about Mexican birds (see, e.g., the maps in Peterson et al. ). Perhaps more challenging is the task of quality‐controlling and cleaning these data, as illustrated in Figure for the two species of an endemic genus ( Hylorchilus ) in urgent need of conservation attention (Toribio and Peterson ).…”

Section: Get the Priorities Rightmentioning

confidence: 99%