Yale Study: Extreme weather now key predictor of North American bird species ranges

Scorching heat waves, severe cold snaps, and other extreme weather events are limiting where species can exist and affecting biodiversity estimates for more than 500 North American bird species. The finding comes from a new study led by Yale researchers and published in the journal Global Change Biology.

The issue is particularly acute in the Great Plains and southwestern regions of the United States, where species ranges and total species counts are significantly overestimated when variable and extreme weather are not considered. Lead author Jeremy Cohen, an associate research scientist in Yale’s Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, noted that the research is the first study to look at how increasingly variable and extreme weather affects avian biodiversity at a continental scale.

Researchers created species distribution models that linked satellite and ground-based environmental data with observational data from eBird, a citizen-science database where members of the public submit bird sightings. By comparing models factoring in temperature and drought extremes against models using seasonal averages, the team determined that models including extreme weather were far more accurate.

Habitat ranges in models that omitted extreme weather events were, on average, 10 percent too large for winter months and 6 percent too large for summer months. Range predictions for individual species saw even higher discrepancies, such as the hooded oriole being overestimated by about 30 percent, the eastern phoebe by about 20 percent, and the varied thrush by about 10 percent.

Co-author Walter Jetz, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Yale and director of the Yale Center for Biodiversity and Global Change, emphasized that accounting for irregular climate patterns is central to understanding biodiversity changes. Precise bird range models remain crucial for habitat conservation programs, especially in areas across the country where observational data is sparse.

The study was co-authored by Shubhi Sharma, Frank La Sorte, and Diego Ellis-Soto. Research support was provided through NASA grants and the E.O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation in furtherance of the Half-Earth Project.

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Yale Study: Extreme weather now key predictor of North American bird species ranges