Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10316/95097
Title: Limited potential for bird migration to disperse plants to cooler latitudes
Authors: González-Varo, Juan P.
Rumeu, Beatriz 
Albrecht, Jörg
Arroyo, Juan M.
Bueno, Rafael S.
Burgos, Tamara
Silva, Luís P. da 
Escribano-Ávila, Gema
Farwig, Nina
García, Daniel
Heleno, Ruben H. 
Illera, Juan C.
Jordano, Pedro 
Kurek, Przemysław
Simmons, Benno I.
Virgós, Emilio
Sutherland, William J.
Traveset, Anna 
Issue Date: 2021
Publisher: Springer Nature
Project: UI0197-UID/BIA/04004/2020 
Serial title, monograph or event: Nature
Abstract: Climate change is forcing the redistribution of life on Earth at an unprecedented velocity1,2 . Migratory birds are thought to help plants to track climate change through long-distance seed dispersal3,4 . However, seeds may be consistently dispersed towards cooler or warmer latitudes depending on whether the fruiting period of a plant species coincides with northward or southward migrations. Here we assess the potential of plant communities to keep pace with climate change through long-distance seed dispersal by migratory birds. To do so, we combine phenological and migration information with data on 949 seed-dispersal interactions between 46 bird and 81 plant species from 13 woodland communities across Europe. Most of the plant species (86%) in these communities are dispersed by birds migrating south, whereas only 35% are dispersed by birds migrating north; the latter subset is phylogenetically clustered in lineages that have fruiting periods that overlap with the spring migration. Moreover, the majority of this critical dispersal service northwards is provided by only a few Palaearctic migrant species. The potential of migratory birds to assist a small, non-random sample of plants to track climate change latitudinally is expected to strongly infuence the formation of novel plant communities, and thus afect their ecosystem functions and community assembly at higher trophic levels.
URI: https://hdl.handle.net/10316/95097
ISSN: 0028-0836
1476-4687
DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-03665-2
Rights: embargoedAccess
Appears in Collections:FCTUC Ciências da Vida - Artigos em Revistas Internacionais
I&D CFE - Artigos em Revistas Internacionais

Files in This Item:
File Description SizeFormat
s41586-021-03665-2.pdf12.65 MBAdobe PDFView/Open
Show full item record

SCOPUSTM   
Citations

52
checked on Mar 25, 2024

WEB OF SCIENCETM
Citations

49
checked on Mar 2, 2024

Page view(s)

127
checked on Mar 26, 2024

Download(s)

107
checked on Mar 26, 2024

Google ScholarTM

Check

Altmetric

Altmetric


This item is licensed under a Creative Commons License Creative Commons