Document Type
Article
Abstract
The existence of patterns in population dynamics across species geographic ranges and climatic niches is a pervasive idea in ecology. Population variability (i.e. temporal variability in population density) should hypothetically increase near range edges or niche limits because of less suitable environments in these areas, but the occurrence of such patterns remains largely unexplored. Further, fluctuations in temperature could pose demographic constraints on populations and also influence their variability. We used Breeding Bird Survey data to show that the population variability of 97 resident North American birds consistently increases towards their niche limits and in areas with more variable temperatures, but not towards their geographic range edges. However, our model has limited explanatory power, and phylogenetic history and species traits could not explain these results. These findings suggest that other factors, such as biotic interactions and resource availability, might be more important drivers of population variability in resident North American birds.
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
Publication Info
Published in Proceeding Biology Science, Volume 292, Issue 2051, 2025.
Rights
© 2025 The Authors. Published bythe Royal Society undertheterms ofthe Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited.
APA Citation
Caten, C. T., Holian, L. A., & Dallas, T. A. (2025). The influence of geographic ranges, climatic niches and temperature fluctuations on population variability. Proceedings of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences, 292(2051). https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2025.0818