Journal
BIRD CONSERVATION INTERNATIONAL
Volume 31, Issue 1, Pages 77-95Publisher
CAMBRIDGE UNIV PRESS
DOI: 10.1017/S0959270920000271
Keywords
climate change; ecological niches; Human Influence Index; sympatry; Vultur gryphus; Coragyps atratus
Categories
Funding
- Fundacion Neotropical and Pontificia Universidad Javeriana
- COLCIENCIAS (Francisco Jose de Caldas 2011 doctoral grant)
- Jorge Ignacio Hernandez Camacho Scholarship Program - Endangered Species Initiative [5]
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Climate change and anthropic intervention can lead to geographic displacement and increased competition among species, affecting the distribution and sympatry between the Andean condor and the black vulture. These changes emphasize the importance of considering these factors in conservation programs for threatened vulture species in the future.
Climate change can cause geographic displacement of the ecological niche of a species, so that similar species that previously did not coexist could begin to face new interactions. Such geographic displacement and increased competition can also be exacerbated by anthropic intervention. Until less than 100 years ago, Vultur gryphus and Coragyps atratus did not coexist. Nowadays, possibly as a result of climate change, changes in the distributions of both species created areas where they are now sympatric. Through ecological niche modeling, we evaluated the possible effects that future scenarios of climate change and human influence would have on the distribution and sympatry between the two species. Our models predict that the current distribution of V. gryphus will be reduced between 18% and 24% by 2050 and between 21% and 32% by 2070. Additionally, they predict that the distribution of C. atratus will be reduced by 31-52% by the year 2050 and 15-60% by 2070. The two algorithms predict a reduction in the areas of sympatry. However, for the northern Andes the overlap between the two species will increase, reaching up to 70% in the year 2070. The distribution of C. atratus will move towards higher areas in the altitudinal gradient, and this will generate an increase in the current sympatry between both species. No clear trend was observed on the effect of human influences on the areas of overlap between the scenarios evaluated. The possible effects of climate change and anthropic intervention in future scenarios found in this study highlight the need to include these effects in future analyses and conservation programs of V. gryphus and other threatened vultures.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available