Environmental distribution modeling of resident and migratory passerine birds from Turkey in a climate change perspective

Abstract

The effects of changing climate have been studied extensively on various species and in different parts of the world. The objective of this thesis is to predict the effect of climate change on the distribution of 20 resident and nine summer breeding migratory Passerines in the Turkey. Potential geographic distribution of Passerine species have been analyzed by using a maximum entropy modelling approach for the years 2020, 2050 and 2080, and appropriate bioclimatic data from two different increasing economic activity level climate change scenarios (A2a and B2a) of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The results indicate that most of the resident species will maintain or expand their presence areas. On the other hand climate change will affect summer migratory Passerines more negatively than the resident species. These migratory species are predicted to lose significant portions of their presence areas during three study periods. The species whose breeding areas are restricted to the more northern and western parts of the Turkey will progressively lose suitable climate space. In addition, species that have restricted breeding areas in the southern parts of the country will have the potential to expand their range to the northern and western parts of Turkey. It should be noted that the results symbolize the best case scenarios, since only bioclimatic variables are used as the main limiting factors and any variable related to availability of suitable habitats and/or roosts are not considered. Future research should incorporate species data from a wider geographic area and more fine-tuned analyses using subspecific distribution information.