ORCID Profile
0000-0001-9686-3844
Current Organisation
James Cook University
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Publisher: Wiley
Date: 12-10-2021
DOI: 10.1111/ECOG.05776
Abstract: Species are not uniformly distributed across the landscape. For every species, there should be few favoured sites where abundance is high and many other sites of lower suitability where abundance is low. Consequently, local abundance could be thought of as a natural expression of species response to local conditions. The correlation between abundance and environmental suitability has been well documented, and a recent meta‐analysis has suggested that this relationship could be a generality. Despite the importance and potential implication of the abundance–suitability relationship, its predictive power for meaningful extrapolations has been surprisingly poorly explored. In this study, we showed how a highly predictable trend can be extracted from the abundance–suitability relationship, accurately predicting the variation in species abundance at a high spatial resolution. We produced high‐quality environmental suitability estimations for 50 endemic species in the Australian Wet Tropics. Environmental suitability derived from species distribution models was related to observed abundance estimated using data from 29 years of uninterrupted monitoring effort. We used the fitted relationship to accurately predict abundance at a fine scale across the species range. Our results showed that the abundance–suitability relationship was strong for endemic species in the Australian Wet Tropics. The predictive power of our models was high, explaining, on average, 55% of the deviance across taxa. Despite interspecific variation in the strength of the abundance–suitability relationship associated with potential intrinsic estimation biases, our approach provides a powerful tool for predicting abundance across the species range at a fine scale. The potential for robust abundance predictions from occurrence‐based species distribution models shown in this study are numerous, and it could have a significant impact in enhancing species conservation and management decisions.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 04-2022
DOI: 10.1111/DDI.13514
Abstract: Climate change is driving species to migrate to novel areas as current environments become unsuitable. As a result, species distributions have shifted uphill in montane ecosystems globally. Heterogeneous dispersal rates among shifting species could result in complex changes to community assemblages. For ex le, interspecific differences in dispersal ability could lead to the disruption, or creation, of species interactions and processes within communities, likely lifying the impact of climate change on ecosystems. Here, we studied the dispersal success of vertebrate species in a tropical montane ecosystem under a climate‐induced uphill shift and assessed the derived impacts on community structures. The Australian Wet Tropics bioregion. We simulated the uphill shift of 7613 community assemblages across the elevational gradient using thermal resistance layers for movement analyses. Dispersal success was calculated as the probability of shifting given species’ dispersal ability and landscape composition. We then used dissimilarity indices to measure the potential changes in community structures resulting from the heterogeneous dispersal success among migrating species. Dispersal success was strongly influenced by species’ dispersal ability, landscape composition and climate change. The heterogeneous dispersal success among migrating species induced marked temporal changes between community assemblages along the elevational gradient. The local extinction rate (i.e. the proportion of species unable to shift) was especially remarkable at high elevations, suggesting potential mass local extinctions of upland species. Furthermore, the increasing local extinction rate with elevation resulted in substantial declines in species co‐occurrence in high‐altitude ecosystems. Our study highlights the escalating impact of climate change on community assemblages in response to climate‐induced elevational shifts, providing a classic ex le of the "escalator to extinction." Future predictions of the impacts of climate change on ecosystems will benefit from improvements in understanding species interactions, population dynamics and species potential to adapt to a changing environment.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 24-01-2023
DOI: 10.1111/GCB.16608
Abstract: Climate‐driven bio ersity erosion is escalating at an alarming rate. The pressure imposed by climate change is exceptionally high in tropical ecosystems, where species adapted to narrow environmental ranges exhibit strong physiological constraints. Despite the observed detrimental effect of climate change on ecosystems at a global scale, our understanding of the extent to which multiple climatic drivers affect population dynamics is limited. Here, we disentangle the impact of different climatic stressors on 47 rainforest birds inhabiting the mountains of the Australian Wet Tropics using hierarchical population models. We estimate the effect of spatiotemporal changes in temperature, precipitation, heatwaves, droughts and cyclones on the population dynamics of rainforest birds between 2000 and 2016. We find a strong effect of warming and changes in rainfall patterns across the elevational‐segregated bird communities, with lowland populations benefiting from increasing temperature and precipitation, while upland species show an inverse strong negative response to the same drivers. Additionally, we find a negative effect of heatwaves on lowland populations, a pattern associated with the observed distribution of these extreme events across elevations. In contrast, cyclones and droughts have a marginal effect on spatiotemporal changes in rainforest bird communities, suggesting a species‐specific response unrelated to the elevational gradient. This study demonstrated the importance of unravelling the drivers of climate change impacts on population changes, providing significant insight into the mechanisms accelerating climate‐induced bio ersity degradation.
Publisher: Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Date: 22-12-2021
DOI: 10.1371/JOURNAL.PONE.0254307
Abstract: Many authors have suggested that the vulnerability of montane bio ersity to climate change worldwide is significantly higher than in most other ecosystems. Despite the extensive variety of studies predicting severe impacts of climate change globally, few studies have empirically validated the predicted changes in distribution and population density. Here, we used 17 years (2000–2016) of standardised bird monitoring across latitudinal/elevational gradients in the rainforest of the Australian Wet Tropics World Heritage Area to assess changes in local abundance and elevational distribution. We used relative abundance in 1977 surveys across 114 sites ranging from 0-1500m above sea level and utilised a trend analysis approach (TRIM) to investigate elevational shifts in abundance of 42 species. The local abundance of most mid and high elevation species has declined at the lower edges of their distribution by % while lowland species increased by up to 190% into higher elevation areas. Upland-specialised species and regional endemics have undergone dramatic population declines of almost 50%. The “Outstanding Universal Value” of the Australian Wet Tropics World Heritage Area, one of the most irreplaceable bio ersity hotspots on Earth, is rapidly degrading. These observed impacts are likely to be similar in many tropical montane ecosystems globally.
Publisher: SciELO Agencia Nacional de Investigacion y Desarrollo (ANID)
Date: 2017
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 06-11-2023
DOI: 10.1111/DDI.13652
Abstract: The increasing frequency and intensity of extreme weather escalate the pressure of global warming on bio ersity. Globally, synergistic effects of multiple components of climate change have driven local extinctions and community collapses, raising concern about the irreversible deterioration of ecosystems. Here, we disentangle the pressure of increasing warming and frequency of extreme heatwaves on the population dynamics of tropical ringtail possums (family: Pseudocheiridae). The Australian Wet Tropics World Heritage Area. Ringtail possums' population dynamics were estimated between 1992 and 2021 using a hierarchical population model that explicitly described the state process and accounted for imperfect detection. Under our model, we propagated the estimated mechanisms governing the system by forecasting ringtails' population dynamics between 2022 and 2050. Derived from this process, we calculated the probability of absolute and quasi‐extinction using different population viability thresholds. We find a strong negative effect of climate change on population dynamics, particularly extreme heatwaves, resulting in a rapid and severe decline in ringtails' population size in the last three decades. Forecasted increases in temperature and heatwaves threaten the collapse of rain forest ringtail possums by 2050, with populations falling below viability thresholds within three decades.
No related grants have been discovered for Alejandro de la Fuente.