In Central Europe, massive losses in species richness of breeding birds have been documented in the last decades, but the question arises whether species richness is currently still decreasing or again increasing due to conservation efforts. In this study, we investigated regional and local species richness as well as mean number of breeding pairs and mean biomass per tetrad over a period of some 20 years at Lake Constance. Th...

Although it is known that changes in land use and climate have an impact on ecological communities, it is unclear which of these factors is currently most important. We sought to determine the influence of land‐use and climate alteration on changes in the abundance of Central European birds. We examined the impact of these factors by contrasting abundance changes of birds of different breeding habitat, latitudinal distribution...

Aim Global climate change is increasingly influencing ecosystems. Long‐term effects on the species richness and composition of ecological communities have been predicted using modelling approaches but, so far, hardly demonstrated in the field. Here, we test whether changes in the composition of bird communities have been influenced by recent climate change. Location Europe. Methods We focus on the proportion of migratory and r...

Little evidence exists demonstrating that global climate change leads to systematic changes in the structure of ecological communities. For avian communities, one would expect warmer winters to lead to declines in numbers of long‐distance migrants if resident birds benefit from warmer winters and impose increasing competitive pressure on migrants. To study the potential influence of global climate change on long‐distance migra...