Over the last century, Icelandic black-tailed godwits have increased 10-fold in numbers and their breeding range has expanded throughout lowland Iceland. Although changing climatic conditions seem likely to have enabled this process, how might warmer conditions have led to this growth? This blog is a summary of a paper by José Alves and colleagues in Ecology & Evolution.
Setting the scene
If scientists are going to try to predict species’ responses to future climatic conditions, they will need to understand the ecological, behavioural and historical factors that influence how change happens. In other words, what mechanisms can link changes in climate with changes in population size and distribution?
Appreciating how local climate effects can potentially scale up to population-level changes requires climate effects to be measured across a population. Iceland is a great place to study these processes as it has been getting warmer since at least 1845, as…
View original post 1,150 more words
Wolf's Birding and Bonsai Blog 