| Titre : | Birds are tracking climate warming, but not fast enough (2008) |
| Auteurs : | Vincent Devictor, Auteur ; Romain Julliard, Auteur ; Denis Couvet, Auteur ; Frédéric Jiguet, Auteur |
| Type de document : | Article |
| Dans : | Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences (275(1652) 2008/12/07) |
| Article en page(s) : | 2743-2748 |
| Langues: | Anglais |
| Résumé : | Range shifts of many species are now documented as a response to global warming. But whether these observed changes are occurring fast enough remains uncertain and hardly quantifiable. Here, we developed a simple framework to measure change in community composition in response to climate warming. This framework is based on a community temperature index (CTI) that directly reflects, for a given species assemblage, the balance between low- and high-temperature dwelling species. Using data from the French breeding bird survey, we first found a strong increase in CTI over the last two decades revealing that birds are rapidly tracking climate warming. This increase corresponds to a 91 km northward shift in bird community composition, which is much higher than previous estimates based on changes in species range edges. During the same period, temperature increase corresponds to a 273 km northward shift in temperature. Change in community composition was thus insufficient to keep up with temperature increase: birds are lagging approximately 182 km behind climate warming. Our method is applicable to any taxa with large-scale survey data, using either abundance or occurrence data. This approach can be further used to test whether different delays are found across groups or in different land-use contexts. |
| En ligne : | http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/275/1652/2743 |



