Climate Change: Rising Temperatures Threaten Bird Biodiversity in Mexico

It turns out that rising temperatures may be threatening birds. Researchers have studied the gains and losses of populations of birds across Mexico in the 20^th century and have found that climate change may be causing a loss of biodiversity.

In this latest study, the scientists used analytical techniques from the field of biodiversity informatics. They compared distributions with distributions in the middle of the 20^th century for 115 bird species that are found only in Mexico. They compared which places appear to have lost which species.

"We picked out places that were well-characterized with data," said A. Townsend Peterson, one of the researchers, in a news release. "Once we did a dissection of what was lost where, we analyzed what could be driving those changes. We got summaries of how much temperature, rainfall and land use had changed across the country, and that was a very interesting result because avifaunal changes were associated with temperature change only."

The scientists created detailed maps based on data about bird occurrences in Mexico from two key sources. More than 330,000 records of historical bird occurrences were drawn from the Atlas of Distributions of Birds of Mexico project collected mostly from 1920 to 1950.

So what did they find? It turns out that temperature fluctuations caused by global climate change are key to determining bird community change in a tropical zone like Mexico. This is surprising since the researchers believed this particular driver would be more likely to be a factor in a temperate zone.

"Birds are making sure they have space and time and resources to carry out their life cycle-the real name of the game is reproduction," said Peterson. "In the temperate zone, birds are waiting until it's just warm enough to start the nesting cycle. They're timing breeding so they'll have young in nests right when they have maximum food available. But in the tropical world, it's always a pleasant temperature for birds, so I'd imagine precipitation might have had more of an effect."

In Mexico, it seems as if losses of species greatly outweighed gains. This is important to note when creating protected areas, such as national parks.

The findings are published in the journal Science Advances.

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