Skip to main content

Advertisement

SpringerLink
Log in

Variability in Energy Influences Avian Distribution Patterns Across the USA

  • Published:
Ecosystems Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Habitat transformations and climate change are among the most important drivers of biodiversity loss. Understanding the factors responsible for the unequal distribution of species richness is a major challenge in ecology. Using data from the North American Breeding Bird Survey to measure species richness and a change metric extracted from the MODerate resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), we examined the influence of energy variability on the geographic distribution of avian richness across the conterminous U.S. and in the different ecoregions, while controlling for energy availability. The analysis compared three groups of birds: all species, Neotropical migrants, and permanent residents. We found that interannual variability in available energy explained more than half of the observed variation in bird richness in some ecoregions. In particular, energy variability is an important factor in explaining the patterns of overall bird richness and of permanent residents, in addition to energy availability. Our results showed a decrease in species richness with increasing energy variability and decreasing energy availability, suggesting that more species are found in more stable and more productive environments. However, not all ecoregions followed this pattern. The exceptions might reflect other biological factors and environmental conditions. With more ecoclimatic variability predicted for the future, this study provides insight into how energy variability influences the geographical patterns of species richness.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Figure 1
Figure 2
Figure 3
Figure 4

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Andrewarthe HG, Birch LC. 1954. Distribution and abundance of animals. University of Chicago Press, Chicago

    Google Scholar 

  • Bailey RG. 1995. Description of the ecoregions of the United States, 2nd ed. rev. and expanded. Misc. Pub. No. 1391 (rev.). USDA Forest Service. Washington, DC, with separate map at 1:7,500,000

  • Blair RB. 1996. Land use and avian species diversity along an urban gradient. Ecological Applications 6: 506–19

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Boulinier T, Nichols JD, Sauer JR, Hines JE, Pollock KH. 1998a. Estimating species richness: the importance of heterogeneity in species detectability. Ecology 79: 1018–28

    Google Scholar 

  • Boulinier T, Nichols JD, Hines JE, Sauer JR, Flather CH, Pollock KH. 1998b. Higher temporal variability of forest breeding bird communities in fragmented landscapes. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 95: 7497–501

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Burnham KP, Overton WS. 1979. Robust estimation of population size when capture probabilities vary among animals. Ecology 60: 927–36

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chatterjee S, Hadi AS, Price B. 2000. Regression analysis by example. John Wiley, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Connell JH. 1978. Diversity in tropical rain forests and coral reefs. Science 199: 1302–10

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Croker TC Jr. 1987. Longleaf pine, a history of man and a forest. USDA Forest Service, Southern Forest Experiment Station, Forestry Report R8-FR 7. 37 pp

  • Currie DJ. 1991. Energy and large-scale patterns of animal and plant species richness. The American Naturalist 137: 27–49

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Currie DJ, Mittelbach GG, Cornell HV, Field R, Guégan JF, Hawkins BA, Kaufman DM, Kerr JT, Oberdorff T, O’Brien E, Turner JRG. 2004. Predictions and tests of climate-based hypotheses of broad-scale variation in taxonomic richness. Ecology Letters 7: 1121–34

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Donovan TM, Flather CH. 2002. Relationships among North American songbird trends, habitat fragmentation, and landscape occupancy. Ecological Applications 12: 364–74

    Google Scholar 

  • Evans KL, Warren PH, Gaston KJ. 2005. Species–energy relationships at the macroecological scale: a review of the mechanisms. Biological Reviews 80: 1–25

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Evans KL, James NA, Gaston KJ. 2006. Abundance, species richness and energy availability in the North American avifauna. Global Ecology and Biogeography 15: 372–85

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fjeldsa J, Lovett JC. 1997. Biodiversity and environmental stability. Biodiversity and Conservation 6: 315–23

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fjeldsa J, Ehrlich D, Lambin E, Prins E. 1997. Are biodiversity ‘hotspots’ correlated with current ecoclimatic stability? A pilot study using NOAA-AVHRR remote sensing data. Biodiversity and Conservation 6: 401–22

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fjeldsa J, Lambin E, Mertens B. 1999. Correlation between endemism and local ecoclimatic stability documented by comparing Andean bird distributions and remotely sensed land surface data. Ecography 22: 63–78

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Francis AP, Currie DJ. 2003. A globally consistent richness–climate relationship for angiosperms. The American Naturalist 161: 523–36

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Gao X, Huete AR, Ni WG, Miura T. 2000. Optical–biophysical relationships of vegetation spectra without background contamination. Remote Sensing of Environment 74: 609–20

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gaston KJ. 2000. Global patterns in biodiversity. Nature 405: 220–7

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • H-Acevedo D, Currie DJ. 2003. Does climate determine broad-scale patterns of species richness? A test of the causal link by natural experiment. Global Ecology and Biogeography 12: 461–73

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Herrera CM. 1978. On the breeding distribution pattern of European migrant birds: MacArthur’s theme re-examined. The Auk 95: 496–509

    Google Scholar 

  • Hines JE, Boulinier T, Nichols JD, Sauer JS, Pollock KH. 1999. COMDYN: software to study the dynamics of animal communities using a capture-recapture approach. Bird Study 46: 209–17

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Houborg RM, Soegaard H. 2004. Regional simulation of ecosystem CO2 and water vapor exchange for agricultural land using NOAA AVHRR and Terra MODIS satellite data. Application to Zealand, Denmark. Remote Sensing of Environment 93: 150–67

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Huete A, Didan K, Miura T, Rodriguez EP, Gao X, Ferreira LG. 2002. Overview of the radiometric and biophysical performance of the MODIS vegetation indices. Remote Sensing of Environment 83: 195–213

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hunter WC, Buehler DA, Canterbury RA, Confer JL, Hamel PB. 2001. Conservation of disturbance-dependent birds in eastern North America. Wildlife Society Bulletin 29: 440–55

    Google Scholar 

  • Hurlbert AH. 2004. Species–energy relationships and habitat complexity in bird communities. Ecology Letters 7: 714–20

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hurlbert AH, Haskell JP. 2003. The effect of energy and seasonality on avian species richness and community composition. The American Naturalist 161: 83–97

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Huston M. 1979. A general hypothesis of species diversity. The American Naturalist 113: 81–101

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • IPCC. 2007. Climate change 2007: The physical science basis. In: Solomon S, Qin D, Manning M, Chen Z, Marquis M, Averyt KB, Tignor M, Miller HL (eds.). Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Jetz W, Rahbek C, Colwell RK. 2004. The coincidence of rarity and richness and the potential signature of history in centres of endemism. Ecology Letters 7:1180–91

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • LaDeau SL, Kilpatrick AM, Marra PP. 2007. West Nile virus emergence and large-scale declines of North American bird populations. Nature 447: 710–3

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Lambin EF, Geist HJ, Lepers E. 2003. Dynamics of land-use and land-cover change in tropical regions. Annual Review of Environment and Resources 28: 205–41

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lepczyk CA, Flather CH, Radeloff VC, Pidgeon AM, Hammer RB, Liu J. 2008. Human impacts on regional avian diversity and abundance. Conservation Biology, 22: 405–16

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Levins R. 1968. Evolution in changing environments: Some theoretical explorations. Princeton University Press, Princeton

    Google Scholar 

  • Linderman M, Rowhani P, Benz D, Serneels S, Lambin EF. 2005.Land-cover change and vegetation dynamics across Africa. Journal of Geophysical Research, 110, D12104, doi:10.1029/2004JD005521

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • MacArthur RH. 1959. On the breeding distribution pattern of North American migrant birds. The Auk 76: 318–25

    Google Scholar 

  • MacArthur RH. 1972. Geographical ecology: Patterns in the distribution of species. Harper & Row, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Millenium Ecosystem Assessment. 2005. Ecosystems and human well-being: Scenarios. In: Carpenter SR, Pingali PL, Bennett EM, Zurek MB (eds.). Findings of the Scenarios Working Group. Island Press, Washington DC

    Google Scholar 

  • Mittelbach GG, Steiner CF, Scheiner SM, Gross KL, Reynolds HL, Waide RB, Willig MR, Dodson SI, Gough L. 2001. What is the observed relationship between species richness and productivity? Ecology 82: 2381–96

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mooney HA, Cleland EE. 2001. The evolutionary impact of invasive species. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA 98: 5446–51

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Neter J, Kutner MH, Nachtsheim CJ, Wasserman W. 1996. Applied linear statistical models. Irwin, Chicago, Illinois

    Google Scholar 

  • Peterjohn BG, Sauer JR. 1993. North American Breeding Bird Survey annual summary 1990–1991. Bird Populations 1:1–24

    Google Scholar 

  • Pidgeon AM, Radeloff VC, Flather CH, Lepczyk CA, Clayton MK, Hawbaker TJ, Hammer RB. 2007. The association of forest bird species richness with housing density and landscape patterns across the United States. Ecological Applications 17: 1989–2010

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Pielou BC. 1975. Ecological diversity. John Wiley & Sons, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Pimm S. 1984. The complexity and stability of ecosystems. Nature 307: 321–6

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pimm SL, Raven P. 2000. Biodiversity: extinctions by numbers. Nature 403: 843–5

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Prince SD. 1991. A model of regional primary production for use with coarse resolution satellite data. International Journal of Remote Sensing 12: 1313–30

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Qian H, Ricklefs RE. 1999. A comparison of the taxonomic richness of vascular plants in China and in the United States. The American Naturalist 154: 160–81

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rahbek C, Gotelli NJ, Colwell RK, Entsminger GL, Rangel TFLVB, Graves G. 2007. Predicting continental-scale patterns of bird species richness with spatially explicit models. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 274:165–74

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Ricklefs RE, Schluter D. 1993. Species diversity in ecological communities. University of Chicago, Chicago

    Google Scholar 

  • Rosenzweig ML. 1995. Species diversity in space and time. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Sala OE, Chapin FS, Armesto JJ, Berlow E, Bloomfield J, Dirzo R, Huber-Sanwald E, Huenneke LF, Jackson RB, Kinzig A, Leemans R, Lodge DM, Mooney HA, Oesterheld M, Poff NL, Sykes MT, Walker BH, Walker M, Wall DH. 2000. Global biodiversity scenarios for the year 2100. Science 287:1770–4

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Sauer JR, Fallon JE, Johnson R. 2003. Use of North American Breeding Bird Survey data to estimate population change for bird conservation regions. Journal of Wildlife Management 67: 372–89

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schaaf CB, Gao F, Strahler AH, Lucht W, Li X, Tsang T, Strugnell NC, Zhang X, Jin Y, Muller J-P, Lewis P, Barnsley M, Hobson P, Disney M, Roberts G, Dunderdale M, Doll C, d’Entremont RP, Hu B, Liang S, Privette JL, Roy D. 2002. First operational BRDF, albedo nadir reflectance products from MODIS. Remote Sensing of Environment 83: 135–48

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Slobodkin LB, Sanders HL. 1969. On the contribution of environmental predictability to species diversity. Brookhaven Symposia in Biology 22: 82–95

    PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Sousa WP. 1979. Experimental investigations of disturbance and ecological succession in a rocky intertidal algal community. Ecological Monographs 49: 227–54

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Storch D, Davies RG, Zajicek S, Orme CDL, Olson V, Thomas GH, Ding T-S, Rasmussen PC, Ridgeley RS, Bennet PM, Blackburn TM, Owens IPF, Gaston KJ. 2006. Energy, range dynamics and global species richness patterns: reconciling mid-domain effects and environmental determinants of avian diversity. Ecology Letters 9: 1308–20

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Srivastava DS, Lawton JH. 1998. Why more productive sites have more species: an experimental test of theory using tree-hole communities. The American Naturalist 152: 510–29

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Thomas CD, Cameron A, Green RE, Bakkenes M, Beaumont LJ, Collingham YC, Erasmus BFN, de Siqueira MF, Grainger A, Hannah L, Hughes L., Huntley B., van Jaarsveld A.S., Midgley G.F., Miles L., Ortega-Huerta M.A., Townsend Peterson A., Phillips OL, Williams SE. 2004. Extinction risk from climate change. Nature 427: 145–8

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Variela I, Martinetto P. 2007. Changes in bird abundance in eastern North America: Urban sprawl and global footprint? Bioscience 57: 360–70

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Walker LC. 1991. The southern forest: a chronicle. University of Texas Press, Austin, Texas. 322 pages

    Google Scholar 

  • Wang J, Rich PM, Price KP, Kettle WD. 2004. Relations between NDVI and tree productivity in the central Great Plains. International Journal of Remote Sensing 25: 3127–38

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wright DH. 1983. Species–energy theory: an extension of species–area theory. Oikos 41:496–506

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Nicholas Keuler for his most useful statistical explanations and support, and Todd Hawbaker for technical support. Pedram Rowhani gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the Ministry of Research of the Grand-Duchy of Luxembourg (“Bourse Formation Recherche”). This research was supported by the NASA Biodiversity Program, and the NASA Interdisciplinary Science Program.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geography, University of Louvain, Place Louis Pasteur, 3, 1348, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium

    Pedram Rowhani & Eric F. Lambin

  2. Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Management, University of Hawai’i at Mānoa, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA

    Christopher A. Lepczyk

  3. Department of Geography, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa, USA

    Marc A. Linderman

  4. Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin, USA

    Anna M. Pidgeon, Volker C. Radeloff & Patrick D. Culbert

Authors
  1. Pedram Rowhani
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Christopher A. Lepczyk
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Marc A. Linderman
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Anna M. Pidgeon
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Volker C. Radeloff
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  6. Patrick D. Culbert
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  7. Eric F. Lambin
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Pedram Rowhani.

Additional information

PR designed study, performed research, analyzed data and wrote paper. CAL, MAL, AMP, VCR, PDC, and EFL designed study and wrote paper.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Rowhani, P., Lepczyk, C.A., Linderman, M.A. et al. Variability in Energy Influences Avian Distribution Patterns Across the USA. Ecosystems 11, 854–867 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10021-008-9165-9

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Revised:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10021-008-9165-9

Keywords

Search

Navigation