This is a past event.

Dr. Jared Wolfe, Assistant Professor

College of Forest Resources and Environmental Science, Michigan Technological University

Summary:

Recent studies from across Central and South America have revealed alarming declines in understory tropical bird populations within pristine forests, particularly among insectivores. These findings have spurred various hypotheses to explain the declines, from physiological stress and pesticide exposure to the impacts of climate change. In this presentation, Dr. Wolfe will discuss the collaborative effort to identify the demographic drivers behind these patterns. Specifically, Dr. Wolfe’s research team used extensive mark-recapture and climate datasets from the central Amazon to examine how increasingly severe dry seasons—driven by climate change—are impacting the survival of understory bird communities. Using a hierarchical Bayesian model with 27 years of capture-mark-recapture data, they found that even a modest rise in dry season temperatures could reduce survival rates by as much as 63% across the bird community. The team’s findings, in press at Science Advances, demonstrate that rising temperatures and decreasing rainfall significantly reduce annual survival rates, likely driving the observed long-term declines. Following life history theory, they found that longer-lived species are especially vulnerable to climate change, as they are particularly sensitive to environmental changes that affect adult survival. The team hypothesizes that these extreme conditions increase physiological stress and reduce food availability, fundamentally destabilizing habitats once considered resilient. These results underscore the urgent need for targeted conservation measures that address climate impacts, even in undisturbed rainforests. By identifying the drivers of climate vulnerability, this research aims to guide international conservation initiatives, such as the United Nations' 30x30 framework, to identify and protect tropical forests likely to serve as climate refugia in the Anthropocene.