Antagonistic effect of natural habitat conversion on community adjustment to climate warming in nonbreeding waterbirds

Abstract

Although the impacts of climate and land‐use changes on biodiversity have been widely documented, their joint effects remain poorly understood. We evaluated how nonbreeding waterbird communities adjust to climate warming along a gradient of land‐use change. Using midwinter waterbird counts (132 species) at 164 major nonbreeding sites in 22 Mediterranean countries, we assessed the changes in species composition from 1991 to 2010, relative to thermal niche position and breadth, in response to regional and local winter temperature anomalies and conversion of natural habitats. We observed a low‐level, nonsignificant community adjustment to the temperature increase where natural habitat conversion occurred. At the sites affected by natural habitat conversion, the relative increase of warm‐dwelling species in response to climate warming was 6 times lower and the relative species decline was 3 times higher than in the sites without natural habitat conversion. We found no evidence of community adjustment to climate warming when natural habitat conversion was >5% over 15 years. This strong negative effect suggests an antagonistic interaction between climate warming and habitat change. These results underline the importance of habitat conservation in community adjustment to climate warming.

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