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Large reductions in tropical bird abundance attributable to heat extreme intensification

Nature Ecology & Evolution volume 9, pages 1897–1909 (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

Although species exhibit widespread sensitivity to environmental conditions, the extent to which human-driven climate change may have already altered their abundance remains unclear. Here we quantify the impact of climate change on bird populations from across the world by combining models of their response to environmental conditions with a climate attribution framework. We identify a dominant role of intensified heat extremes compared to changes in average temperature and precipitation. Increased interannual exposure to hot extremes reduces annual abundance growth rates most strongly in lower-latitude tropical regions, with effects robust when controlling for changing human industrial pressure and other long-term drivers. Compared to a counterfactual without human-driven climate change, the historical intensification of heat extremes has caused a 25–38% reduction in the level of abundance of tropical birds, which has accumulated from 1950 to 2020. Across observed tropical bird populations, impacts of climate change have typically been larger than direct human pressure, the opposite across sub-tropical regions. Overall, these results showcase how human-driven climate change is already reshaping biodiversity globally and may explain reported declines of birds in undisturbed tropical habitats.

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Fig. 1: The exposure of terrestrial bird populations to human pressure and intensifying high temperature extremes.
Fig. 2: Heterogenous and persistent impacts of hot temperature extremes on the interannual growth rate of terrestrial bird population abundance.
Fig. 3: Long-term changes in the abundance levels of terrestrial bird populations attributable to climate change and human pressure.

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Data availability

Data on the abundance of terrestrial birds from the Living Planet database are publicly available via the Living Planet Index at https://www.livingplanetindex.org/. Data on historical climate conditions from ERA-5 are publicly available via the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts at https://www.ecmwf.int/en/forecasts/datasets/reanalysis-datasets/era5. AVONET data on morphological, ecological and geographic features of bird species are publicly available via Open Traits Network at https://opentraits.org/datasets/avonet.html. All processed data are publicly available via Zenodo at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.13695554 (ref. 69). Source data are provided with this paper.

Code availability

All code necessary for reproduction of the results are publicly available via Zenodo at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.13695554 (ref. 69).

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Acknowledgements

We thank attendees of the seminar at the Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation Science at the University of Queensland for helpful comments on an early version of the paper, as well as the Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation Science for hosting an Early Career writing retreat during which much of this work was undertaken. M.K. acknowledges support from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme via a Marie Skłodowska-Curie postdoctoral fellowship, as well as the German Academic Exchange Service for funding for a research stay at the University of Queensland.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Barcelona Supercomputing Centre, Barcelona, Spain

    Maximilian Kotz

  2. Research Department IV of Complexity Science, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Potsdam, Germany

    Maximilian Kotz

  3. School of the Environment, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

    Tatsuya Amano & James E. M. Watson

  4. Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation Science, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

    Tatsuya Amano & James E. M. Watson

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  1. Maximilian Kotz
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  2. Tatsuya Amano
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Contributions

M.K. proposed the study and designed the analysis with input on modelling design from T.A. and J.E.M.W. M.K. conducted the analysis and produced the figures. All authors contributed to the interpretation and presentation of the results. M.K. wrote the manuscript with input from all authors.

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Correspondence to Maximilian Kotz.

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Extended data

Extended Data Fig. 1 Long-term trends in population abundance growth rates.

Panels show the distribution of long-term trends in population growth rates, obtained by linear regression of the difference in logarithmic abundance levels between years for each population for all available years of data. The distributions are shown for all populations and across aggregated biomes. One can see that these population distributions are centred on zero with balanced numbers of populations exhibiting positive and negative trends in abundance growth rates.

Source data

Extended Data Fig. 2 Long-term trends in population abundance levels.

Panels show the distribution of long-term trends in population growth rates, obtained by linear regression of the logarithmic abundance levels for each population for all available years of data. The distributions are shown for all populations and across aggregated biomes. The distributions are mainly centred around zero, with the exception of the Tropical and Mediterranean realms which show a slight skew towards negative trends in abundance levels.

Source data

Extended Data Fig. 3 The distribution of attributable climate impacts across populations.

The distribution of attributable impacts from climate change (including both heat and precipitation extremes) across different populations within each land-tercile (0–21 degrees North or South, 21–43 degrees North or South, and 43–90 degrees North or South). As in Fig. 3, changes in the abundance level attributable to climate change are the changes between the observed populations and those in a counterfactual scenario without climate change.

Source data

Extended Data Table 1 Robustness of results when accounting for spatial autocorrelation
Full size table
Extended Data Table 2 Robustness of results when accounting for phylogenetic autocorrelation
Full size table

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Supplementary Information

Supplementary Tables 1–8, Figs. 1–14 and Discussion.

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Kotz, M., Amano, T. & Watson, J.E.M. Large reductions in tropical bird abundance attributable to heat extreme intensification. Nat Ecol Evol 9, 1897–1909 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-025-02811-7

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