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Effects of climate change on species turnover and body mass frequency distributions of S outh A frican bird communities
Author(s) -
Walther Bruno A.,
Niekerk Adriaan
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
african journal of ecology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.499
H-Index - 54
eISSN - 1365-2028
pISSN - 0141-6707
DOI - 10.1111/aje.12143
Subject(s) - biome , climate change , ecology , ecosystem , frequency distribution , environmental science , distribution (mathematics) , niche , atmospheric sciences , geography , biology , statistics , mathematics , physics , mathematical analysis
Climate change will lead to substantial shifts in species distributions. Most of the predictions of shifting distributions rely on modelling future distributions with ecological niche models. We used these models to investigate (i) the expected species turnover, loss and gain within bird communities of four S outh A frican biomes and (ii) the expected changes in the body mass frequency distributions of these communities. We used distributional data of the S outhern A frican B ird A tlas P roject, current climate data and two scenarios of future climate change for 2050 to build ensemble models of bird distributions. Our results indicate that future species loss, gain and turnover within the four biomes will be considerable. Climate change will also have statistically significant effects on body mass frequency distributions, and these effects differ substantially depending on the severity of future climate change. We discuss the possible ecological effects of these predicted changes on ecosystem interactions and functions.