Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY B-BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
Volume 276, Issue 1670, Pages 3063-3070Publisher
ROYAL SOC
DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2009.0656
Keywords
range edges; species' distributions; birds; climate; habitat heterogeneity; spatial analysis
Categories
Funding
- Grantham studentship
- Natural Environment Research Council [NE/B503492/1]
- Imperial College
- Natural Environment Research Council [NE/B503492/1, cpb010001] Funding Source: researchfish
- NERC [cpb010001] Funding Source: UKRI
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Although understanding large-scale spatial variation in species' distributions is a major goal in macro-ecology, relatively little attention has been paid to the factors limiting species' ranges. An understanding of these factors may improve predictions of species' movements in response to global change. We present a measure of landscape impermeability, defined as the proportion of resident species whose ranges end in an area. We quantify and map impermeability for Afrotropical birds and use multi-model inference to assess support for a wide suite of hypotheses about its potential environmental correlates. Non-spatial analyses emphasize the importance of broad-scale environmental patterns of energy availability and habitat heterogeneity in limiting species' distributions. Conversely, spatial analyses focus attention on small-scale factors of habitat and topographic complexity. These results hold even when only species from the top quartile of range sizes are assessed. All our analyses highlight that range edges are concentrated in heterogeneous habitats. Global change is expected to alter the nature and distribution of such habitats, necessitating range movement by many resident species. Therefore, impermeability provides a simple measure for identifying regions, where continuing global change and human encroachment are likely to cause profound changes in regional diversity patterns.
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