Catalan Ornithological Institute, Natural History Museum of Barcelona, Plaça Leonardo da Vinci 4-5, 08019, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain.
CREAF, 08193, Cerdanyola del Vallès, Spain.
Sci Rep. 2019 Apr 5;9(1):5680. doi: 10.1038/s41598-019-42171-4.
The climatic preferences of the species determine to a large extent their response to climate change. Temperature preferences have been shown to play a key role in driving trends in animal populations. However, the relative importance of temperature and precipitation preferences is still poorly understood, particularly in systems where ecological processes are strongly constrained by the amount and timing of rainfall. In this study, we estimated the role played by temperature and precipitation preferences in determining population trends for birds and butterflies in a Mediterranean area. Trends were derived from long-term biodiversity monitoring data and temperature and precipitation preferences were estimated from species distribution data at three different geographical scales. We show that population trends were first and foremost related to precipitation preferences both in birds and in butterflies. Temperature preferences had a weaker effect on population trends, and were significant only in birds. The effect of precipitation on population trends operated in opposite directions in the two groups of species: butterfly species from arid environments and bird species from humid habitats are decreasing most. Our results indicate that, although commonly neglected, water availability is likely an important driver of animal population change in the Mediterranean region, with highly contrasting impacts among taxonomical groups.
物种的气候偏好在很大程度上决定了它们对气候变化的响应。温度偏好已被证明在驱动动物种群趋势方面起着关键作用。然而，温度和降水偏好的相对重要性仍知之甚少，特别是在生态过程受到降雨量和时间强烈限制的系统中。在这项研究中，我们估计了温度和降水偏好在决定地中海地区鸟类和蝴蝶种群趋势中的作用。趋势是从长期生物多样性监测数据中得出的，而温度和降水偏好则是根据三个不同地理尺度的物种分布数据来估计的。我们表明，种群趋势首先与鸟类和蝴蝶的降水偏好密切相关。温度偏好对种群趋势的影响较弱，仅在鸟类中显著。降水对种群趋势的影响在两组物种中作用方向相反：来自干旱环境的蝴蝶物种和来自潮湿生境的鸟类物种减少最多。我们的结果表明，尽管通常被忽视，但水的可用性可能是地中海地区动物种群变化的一个重要驱动因素，在不同的分类群中产生了截然不同的影响。
