RELOAD · Realised ecological niche and species distributions under global environmental change

Species are readjusting their geographical distributions as a response to ongoing environmental change. Thus, predicting species distributions is an urgent conservation endeavour. However, the responses of a species to the environment may vary in space and time (i.e. niche change) as the result of the spatiotemporal context of where and when its different populations occur. Niche changes are expected to have important consequences: (i) they can invalidate niche-based species distribution models, as a widely used predictive conservation tool, due to the limited spatiotemporal context of the underlying species distribution data, and (ii) they can impact the performance of species (e.g. their conservation status and extinction risk) that become decoupled from their optimal environmental conditions. However, we still poorly understand how the magnitude of niche change varies among species, especially within their native distributions and over relatively short time spans under ongoing global change. I will study how and why the magnitude of niche change varies among bird species. More specifically, I will examine how species functional traits and rates of global change within the species' geographical ranges affect the magnitude of niche change, and how niche change may impact the conservation status of species. The ultimate goal is to produce a global synthesis of spatial and temporal niche change to understand the general propensity of bird species to change their realised ecological niches. The project will contribute to estimate species-wise uncertainty of species distribution models and refine their predictions based on species' ecological traits.