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Edited by Alan Hastings, University of California, Davis, CA, and approved September 27, 2018 (received for review March 9, 2018)
Significance
Global warming is predicted to constitute an “escalator to extinction” for species that live on mountains. This is because species are generally moving to higher elevations as temperatures warm, and species that live only near mountaintops may run out of room. However, there is little evidence that high-elevation populations are disappearing as predicted. Here, we show that recent warming does indeed act as an escalator to extinction for birds that live on a remote Peruvian mountain. High-elevation species have shrunk in range size and declined in abundance, and several previously common species have disappeared. We suggest that high-elevation species in the tropics are particularly vulnerable to climate change.
Abstract
Montane species worldwide are shifting upslope in response to recent temperature increases. These upslope shifts are predicted to lead to mountaintop extinctions of species that live only near mountain summits, but empirical examples of populations that have disappeared are sparse. We show that recent warming constitutes an “escalator to extinction” for birds on a remote Peruvian mountain—high-elevation species have declined in both range size and abundance, and several previously common mountaintop residents have disappeared from the local community. Our findings support projections that warming will likely drive widespread extirpations and extinctions of high-elevation taxa in the tropical Andes. Such climate change-driven mountaintop extirpations may be more likely in the tropics, where temperature seems to exert a stronger control on species’ range limits than in the temperate zone. In contrast, we show that lowland bird species at our study site are expanding in range size as they shift their upper limits upslope and may thus benefit from climate change.
Footnotes
- ↵1To whom correspondence should be addressed. Email: freeman{at}zoology.ubc.ca.
Author contributions: B.G.F. designed research; B.G.F., M.N.S., and J.W.F. performed research; B.G.F., M.N.S., and V.R.-G. analyzed data; and B.G.F., M.N.S., V.R.-G., and J.W.F. wrote the paper.
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
This article is a PNAS Direct Submission.
See Commentary on page 11871.
This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.1804224115/-/DCSupplemental.
Published under the PNAS license.
Climate change causes upslope shifts and mountaintop extirpations in a tropical bird community
Article Classifications
- Biological Sciences
- Ecology
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