Functional Diversity Responses to Temperature Vary Spatially and With Protection Status in Wintering Waterbird Assemblages.
4 affiliations
- 1School of Biological Sciences, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK.
- 2School of GeoSciences, The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK.
- 3Departament de Biologia Evolutiva, Ecologia i Ciències Ambientals, Facultat de Biologia, Universitat de Barcelona (UB), Barcelona, Spain.
- 4Institut de Recerca de la Biodiversitat (IRBio), Universitat de Barcelona (UB), Barcelona, Spain.
Abstract
Wetlands support disproportionately high biodiversity, including waterbirds, which underpin key ecological functions and regulatory services. This has led to efforts to protect these crucial sites, but whether these protections can maintain waterbird assemblages in the face of new threats such as climate change is poorly understood. Here, we calculated functional redundancy and three metrics of functional diversity from over 45,000 waterbird censuses, spanning four decades of rising winter temperatures for 2792 protected and unprotected sites in Europe. We modelled the effect of average winter temperature and the trend over time for each of these metrics. Our results suggest functional diversity generally increased in warmer winters and over time, but redundancy declined, and the effect of temperature varied spatially and between levels of protection. This suggests abundance and distribution shifts due to climate change are altering functional diversity and resilience of waterbird assemblages both inside and outside protected areas across Europe.
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BibTeX
@article{hackney2026functional,
title = {{Functional Diversity Responses to Temperature Vary Spatially and With Protection Status in Wintering Waterbird Assemblages.}},
author = {Tanith B Hackney and Hannah S Wauchope and Pol Capdevila and Christopher F Clements},
journal = {Ecology letters},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.1111/ele.70467},
url = {https://europepmc.org/article/MED/42900483},
note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Functional Diversity Responses to Temperature Vary Spatially and With Protection Status in Wintering Waterbird Assemblages.
AU - Tanith B Hackney
AU - Hannah S Wauchope
AU - Pol Capdevila
AU - Christopher F Clements
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/01
JO - Ecology letters
DO - 10.1111/ele.70467
UR - https://europepmc.org/article/MED/42900483
AB - Wetlands support disproportionately high biodiversity, including waterbirds, which underpin key ecological functions and regulatory services. This has led to efforts to protect these crucial sites, but whether these protections can maintain waterbird assemblages in the face of new threats such as climate change is poorly understood. Here, we calculated functional redundancy and three metrics of functional diversity from over 45,000 waterbird censuses, spanning four decades of rising winter temperatures for 2792 protected and unprotected sites in Europe. We modelled the effect of average winter temperature and the trend over time for each of these metrics. Our results suggest functional diversity generally increased in warmer winters and over time, but redundancy declined, and the effect of temperature varied spatially and between levels of protection. This suggests abundance and distribution shifts due to climate change are altering functional diversity and resilience of waterbird assemblages both inside and outside protected areas across Europe.
SN - 1461-023X
SN - 1461-0248
ER -