Multi-species occupancy (MSO) models use detection-nondetection data from species observed at different locations to estimate the probability that a particular species occupies a particular geographical region. The models are particularly useful for estimating the occupancy probabilities associated with rare species since they are seldom observed when undertaking field surveys. In this paper, we develop Gibbs sampling algorith...

The time taken to detect a species during site occupancy surveys contains information about the observation process. Accounting for the observation process leads to better inference about site occupancy. We explore the gain in efficiency that can be obtained from time‐to‐detection (TTD) data and show that this model type has a significant benefit for estimating the parameters related to detection intensity. However, for estima...

Aim Test hypotheses that present biodiversity and endemic species richness are related to climatic stability and/or biome persistence. Location Africa south of 15° S. Methods Seventy eight HadCM3 general circulation model palaeoclimate experiments spanning the last 140,000 years, plus a pre‐industrial experiment, were used to calculate measures of climatic variability for 0.5° grid cells. Models were fitted relating distributi...

Aim Bioclimatic envelope models are widely used to describe changes in climatically suitable areas for species under future climate scenarios. Climate change metrics are applied independently of species data to characterize the spatio‐temporal dynamics of climate, and have also been used as indicators of the exposure of species to climate change. Here, we investigate whether these two approaches provide qualitatively similar i...

The dynamic, multi‐season occupancy model framework has become a popular tool for modeling open populations with occupancies that change over time through local colonizations and extinctions. However, few versions of the model relate these probabilities to the occupancies of neighboring sites or patches. We present a modeling framework that incorporates this information and is capable of describing a wide variety of spatiotemp...

We analysed more than 25 years of change in passerine bird distribution in South Africa, Swaziland and Lesotho, to show that species distributions can be influenced by processes that are at least in part independent of the local strength and direction of climate change: land use and ecological succession. We used occupancy models that separate species' detection from species' occupancy probability, fitted to citizen science da...

Current knowledge of phenological shifts in Palearctic bird migration is largely based on data collected on migrants at their breeding grounds; little is known about the phenology of these birds at their nonbreeding grounds, and even less about that of intra‐African migrants. Because climate change patterns are not uniform across the globe, we can expect regional disparities in bird phenological responses. It is also likely th...

Aim Under the abundant centre syndrome, species progressively decline in abundance from the centre to the boundaries of their range, due to abiotic conditions, competition or interaction between the two, eventually leading to replacement by a functional equivalent. After a schematic overview of different scenarios of interactions between competitive and abiotic effects, we analysed spatial variation in abundance in four sets o...

Aim To move towards modelling spatial abundance patterns and to evaluate the relative impacts of climatic change upon species abundances as opposed to range extents. Location Southern Africa, including Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland and Zimbabwe. Methods Quantitative response surface models were fitted for 78 bird species, mostly endemic (68) or near‐endemic to the region, to model relationships between species repo...

Ecology Letters (2010) 13: 616–626 Abstract Sex‐dependent selection often leads to spectacularly different phenotypes in males and females. In species in which sexual dimorphism is not complete, it is unclear which benefits females and males derive from displaying a trait that is typical of the other sex. In barn owls ( Tyto alba ), females exhibit on average larger black eumelanic spots than males but members of the two sexes...