Sea‐level rise (SLR) is expected to cause major changes to coastal wetlands, which are among the world's most vulnerable ecosystems and are critical for nonbreeding waterbirds. Because strategies for adaptation to SLR, such as nature‐based solutions and designation of protected areas, can locally reduce the negative effects of coastal flooding under SLR on coastal wetlands, it is crucial to prioritize adaptation efforts, espec...

Aim As global temperatures have increased, many species distributions have exhibited polewards shifts, a trend that is predicted to continue in future decades. However, the mechanisms underlying such shifts are not well understood. Here we quantify the impact of large‐scale variation in temperature on reproductive output within a group of migratory birds to assess the potential for future range changes. Location Western E urop...

Urban ecology is emerging as an integrative science that explores the interactions of people and biodiversity in cities. Interdisciplinary research requires the creation of new tools that allow the investigation of relations between people and biodiversity. It has been established that access to green spaces or nature benefits city dwellers, but the role of species diversity in providing psychological benefits remains poorly s...

Genes of the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) are the most polymorphic loci known in vertebrates. Two main hypotheses have been put forward to explain the maintenance of MHC diversity: pathogen‐mediated selection and MHC‐based mate choice. Host–parasite interactions can maintain MHC diversity via frequency‐dependent selection, heterozygote advantage, and diversifying selection (spatially and/or temporally heterogeneous s...

Without robust and unbiased systems for monitoring, changes in natural systems will remain enigmatic for policy makers, leaving them without a clear idea of the consequences of any environmental policies they might adopt. Generally, biodiversity‐monitoring activities are not integrated or evaluated across any large geographic region. The EuMon project conducted the first large‐scale evaluation of monitoring practices in Europe...

Aim Worldwide, functional homogenization is now considered to be one of the most prominent forms of biotic impoverishment induced by current global changes. Yet this process has hardly been quantified on a large scale through simple indices, and the connection between landscape disturbance and functional homogenization has hardly been established. Here we test whether changes in land use and landscape fragmentation are associa...

Genes of the Major Histocompatibility Complex ( Mhc ) play a fundamental role during the immune response because MHC molecules expressed on cell surface allow the recognition and presentation of antigenic peptides to T‐lymphocytes. Although Mhc alleles have been found to correlate with pathogen resistance in several host‐parasite systems, several studies have also reported associations between Mhc alleles and an accrued infect...

Few studies have examined how life history traits and the climate envelope influence the ability of species to respond to climate change and habitat degradation. In this study, we test whether 18 species‐specific variables, related to the climate envelope, ecological envelope and life history, could predict recent population trends (over 17 years) of 71 common breeding bird species in France. Habitat specialists were declining...

We studied the community richness and dynamics of birds in landscapes recently affected by urbanization to test the prediction that biotic communities living in degraded landscapes are increasingly composed of generalist species. We analyzed bird communities in 657 plots monitored by the French Breeding Bird Survey from 2001 to 2005, accounting for the probability of species detection and spatial autocorrelation. We used an in...

Migration is a widespread strategy that enables animals to escape harsh winter conditions. It has been well documented that migration phenology in birds is changing in response to recent climate warming in the northern hemisphere. Despite the existence of large temporal and geographical scale ringing data on birds in Europe, changes in migration strategies in relation to climate warming have not been well studied, mainly becau...

The identification of the characteristics of species that make them susceptible or resilient to climate change has been elusive because non‐climatic influences may dominate short‐ and medium‐term changes in population and distribution sizes. Here we studied the 2003 French heat wave, during which other confounding variables remained essentially unchanged, with a correlational approach. We tested the relationship between popula...

Each species generally has a close relationship with one or more habitats and can therefore be classified as either specialist or generalist. We studied whether specialist and generalist species are spatially distributed independently of each other. Repeating the analysis for 100 of the most frequent terrestrial bird species recorded over the 10 000 sampled sites of the French Breeding Bird survey, we found that specialists we...

Climate change, habitat degradation, and direct exploitation are thought to threaten biodiversity. But what makes some species more sensitive to global change than others? Approaches to this question have relied on comparing the fate of contrasting groups of species. However, if some ecological parameter affects the fate of species faced with global change, species response should vary smoothly along the parameter gradient. Th...