WCS 3-Sentence Science

For Certain Himalayan Birds, It’s Getting (too) Hot, Hot, Hot

October 31, 2019

CREDIT: PAUL ELSEN

Each year, Wildlife Conservation Society scientists publish more than 300 peer-reviewed studies and papers. “WCS 3-Sentence Science” is a regular tip-sheet — in bite sized helpings — of some of this published work.

Here we present work by WCS’s Paul Elsen on bird communities in the Himalayas.

1. Researchers studied how bird communities are responding to agricultural expansion in the Himalayan mountain range, which exhibits a strong east-west gradient in annual temperature variation.
2. They surveyed bird communities at opposite ends of that gradient, and tested whether species’ thermal sensitivity influenced their response to the replacement of forest with agriculture.
3. They found that thermal specialists are more vulnerable to forest loss than species with greater thermal tolerances indicating that species’ responses to global change may differ predictably along gradients even within a single region or biodiversity hotspot, and such variation must be addressed in conservation planning.

Study and Journal: “Annual temperature variation influences the vulnerability of montane bird communities to land‐use change” from Ecography
WCS Co-Author(s): Paul Elsen, Climate Adaptation Scientist

For more information, contact: Stephen Sautner, 718–220–3682, ssautner@wcs.org.