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The biological traits of some bird species render them particularly vulnerable to climate change
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© Ben Lascelles

Species’ sensitivity to climate change is dependent on a suite of taxon-specific biological and ecological traits. BirdLife is collaborating with the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) to develop a ‘Vulnerability Assessment Framework’ to identify those species most at risk from climate change. A preliminary analysis suggests that a high percentage of the world’s bird species—including many not yet considered threatened—possess characteristics that render them particularly vulnerable.


Ecologists are increasingly using large-scale modelling of species’ distributions in order to forecast the impacts of climate change on biodiversity (Thuiller 2007). Such models can produce sobering predictions: for example, 15–37% of species are likely to be ‘committed to extinction’ by 2050 according to one such study (Thomas et al. 2004). However, bioclimatic models rely on broad assumptions and rarely take into account species-specific biological traits or ecological interactions, such as competition (Araújo and Luoto 2007). To more fully assess the impact of climate change on biological communities, it is essential to identify those characteristics, such as life history, ecology, behaviour, physiology and genetic makeup, that increase species’ vulnerability. It is especially important that the IUCN Red List—the world's most authoritative inventory of species’ global conservation status—accurately reflects the threat posed by climate change (Bomhard et al. 2005).

To this end, BirdLife and IUCN are working on a framework for systematically assessing species vulnerability to climate change (Foden et al. 2008). The species at the greatest risk of climate-change induced extinction are those with low adaptive capacity, distributions that are likely to be exposed to considerable climatic change, and those with inherent biological traits that render them particularly susceptible. More than 90 traits have been identified that are associated with enhanced sensitivity to climate change.

A preliminary analysis of the world’s birds (9,856 species) suggests that up to 35% have characteristics that render them particularly susceptible to climate change (Foden et al. 2008). Of these, 72% are currently not considered threatened with extinction on the IUCN Red List, meaning that they represent an additional set of conservation priorities. In addition, most birds that are already threatened (80%) are also ‘climate-change susceptible’ and may therefore face an even more uncertain future. Certain taxonomic groups are shown to be particularly sensitive, including seabirds within the Diomedeidae (albatrosses), Spheniscidae (penguins), Procellariidae, Pelecanoididae and Hydrobatidae (petrels and shearwaters) families and Neotropical forest-dependent passerines such as Thamnophilidae (antbirds), Formicariidae (antthrushes and antpittas) and Pipridae (manakins).

Similarly high levels of climate-change susceptibility were identified for amphibians and warm water reef-building corals, suggesting that climate change is likely to have a profound impact not just on birds, but on global biodiversity as a whole.


References

Araújo, M. B. and Luoto, M. (2007) The importance of biotic interactions for modelling species distributions under climate change. Glob. Ecol. Biogeogr. 16: 743–753.
 
Bomhard, B., Richardson, D. M., Donaldson, J. S., Hughes, G. O., Midgley, G. F., Raimondo, D. C., Rebelo, A. G., Rouget, M. and Thuiller, W. (2005) Potential impacts of future land use and climate change on the Red List status of the Proteaceae in the Cape Floristic Region, South Africa. Glob. Change Biol. 11: 1452–1468.
 
Foden, W., Mace, G., Vié, J.-C., Angulo, A., Butchart, S., DeVantier, L., Dublin, H., Gutsche, A., Stuart, S. and Turak, E. (2008) Species susceptibility to climate change impacts. Pp.77–87 in J.-C. Vié, C. Hilton-Taylor and S. N. Stuart, eds Wildlife in a changing world: an analysis of the 2008 IUCN Red List of threatened species. Gland, Switzerland: IUCN.
 
Thomas, C. D., Cameron, A., Green, R. E., Bakkenes, M., Beaumont, L. J., Collingham, Y. C., Erasmus, B. F. N., de Siqueira, M. F., Grainger, A., Hannah, L., Hughes, L., Huntley, B., van Jaarsveld, A. S., Midgley, G. F., Miles, L., Ortega-Huerta, M. A., Peterson, A. T., Phillips, O. L. and Williams, S. E. (2004) Extinction risk from climate change. Nature 427: 145–148.
 
Thuiller, W. (2007) Climate change and the ecologist. Nature 448: 550–552.

Compiled 2009

Recommended Citation:
BirdLife International (2010) The biological traits of some bird species render them particularly vulnerable to climate change. Presented as part of the BirdLife State of the world's birds website. Available from: http://www.biodiversityinfo.org/casestudy.php?id=275. Checked: 9th September 2010