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Global patterns of climate change impacts on desert bird communities

Ma, Liang; Conradie, Shannon R.; Crawford, Christopher L.; Gardner, Alexandra S.; Kearney, Michael R.; Maclean, Ilya M. D.; McKechnie, Andrew E.; Mi, Chun-Rong; Senior, Rebecca A.; Wilcove, David S.

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Authors

Liang Ma

Shannon R. Conradie

Christopher L. Crawford

Alexandra S. Gardner

Michael R. Kearney

Ilya M. D. Maclean

Andrew E. McKechnie

Chun-Rong Mi

David S. Wilcove



Abstract

The world’s warm deserts are predicted to experience disproportionately large temperature increases due to climate change, yet the impacts on global desert biodiversity remain poorly understood. Because species in warm deserts live close to their physiological limits, additional warming may induce local extinctions. Here, we combine climate change projections with biophysical models and species distributions to predict physiological impacts of climate change on desert birds globally. Our results show heterogeneous impacts between and within warm deserts. Moreover, spatial patterns of physiological impacts do not simply mirror air temperature changes. Climate change refugia, defined as warm desert areas with high avian diversity and low predicted physiological impacts, are predicted to persist in varying extents in different desert realms. Only a small proportion (<20%) of refugia fall within existing protected areas. Our analysis highlights the need to increase protection of refugial areas within the world’s warm deserts to protect species from climate change.

Citation

Ma, L., Conradie, S. R., Crawford, C. L., Gardner, A. S., Kearney, M. R., Maclean, I. M. D., …Wilcove, D. S. (2023). Global patterns of climate change impacts on desert bird communities. Nature Communications, 14(1), Article 211. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-35814-8

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Jan 3, 2023
Online Publication Date Jan 13, 2023
Publication Date 2023
Deposit Date Nov 6, 2023
Publicly Available Date Nov 6, 2023
Journal Nature Communications
Publisher Nature Research
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 14
Issue 1
Article Number 211
DOI https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-35814-8
Keywords General Physics and Astronomy; General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology; General Chemistry; Multidisciplinary
Public URL https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1897963

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Copyright Statement
This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.





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