Climate change is forcing many species to adapt to rising temperatures. Adaptations can be temporal, such as shifts in phenology to earlier breeding dates, or spatial, such as shifts upward in elevation or poleward in latitude that benefit from conservation actions such as climate corridors, stepping stones, and climate refugia.
How species track temperature across these three dimensions – phenology, elevation, and latitude – has been well-studied. However, most research examines how well species track temperature along only one of these dimensions. This creates the risk of underestimating the extent to which species are adapting to climate change, since it’s likely that many of them are tracking all three dimensions at the same time.
Neate-Clegg, M.H.C., Tonelli, B.A., and Tingley, M.W. 2024. Advances in breeding phenology outpace latitudinal and elevational shifts for North American birds tracking temperature. Nature Ecology & Evolution 8: 2027–2036.
A new study focuses on all three spatiotemporal dimensions to determine not only which dimension is most often used, but how well species are tracking temperature in each dimension. Using 27 years of North American survey data from the USGS Breeding Bird Survey (BBS) and the Monitoring Avian Productivity and Survivorship (MAPS) program, researchers estimated latitudinal shifts, elevational shifts, and phenological shifts for hundreds of terrestrial bird species. They were then able to calculate the ratio of observed shift across each dimension versus expected shift for several hundred species, and combine all three measurements for over 100 species to quantify the ability of a species to track temperature across all three dimensions simultaneously.
While the results confirm that hundreds of North American bird species are tracking climate by moving poleward, moving upward, and shifting phenology earlier, none of them do so very well. For those species that could be evaluated for all three dimensions, birds shifted with temperature at only 33% of the rate necessary to keep up with shifting temperatures. Of this temperature tracking, almost two-thirds was through temporal shifts in breeding phenology, rather than spatial shifts in latitude or elevation. There was little correlation among shift rates across all three dimensions, suggesting that shifting along one dimension is independent of shifting along another.
The rate at which species shifted their ranges in each dimension was low, and similar to previous studies. Species on average shifted poleward by 11 km per decade (11% of the expected rate needed to track temperature); they shifted to higher elevations by 12 m per decade (17% of expectation); and phenology advanced by 0.8 days per decade (28% of expectation). These average shifts showed a high degree of variability, however, with some species failing to track temperature along one or multiple dimensions, or even shifting in the opposite direction as expected.
Understanding how species track temperature across multiple dimensions is key to estimating the true extent of species response to climate change. While a shift in phenology seems to be the most common mechanism, spatial shifts are still frequently seen in many species. Maintaining protected areas and keeping habitat connected allows species to effectively move ranges, as well as follow resources tied to phenological shifts, making it more likely that the majority of species can successfully adapt to future climate conditions.
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