Tropical bird species have less variable body sizes

Biogeography: Are Tropical Species Less Specialised?

Species richness increases from the poles to the tropics, which has led to the view that interactions in tropical species are more specialised. A new study on pollinators and seed dispersers finds that tropical interactions are in fact less specialised.

More variable tropical climates have a slower demographic growth

Tropical Bird Communities

Tropical ecosystems harbor the world’s greatest diversity of avian species. Latitudinal patterns of climate and productivity, alongside historical factors, have been evoked to explain such characteristics, and there is increasing knowledge that the complex ecological interactions found in the tropical zone play a very important role in this process, regulating competition and allowing an increa...

Have bird distributions shifted along an elevational gradient on a tropical mountain?

An upward shift in elevation is one of the most conspicuous species responses to climate change. Nevertheless, downward shifts and, apparently, the absences of response have also been recently reported. Given the growing evidence of multiple responses of species distributions due to climate change and the paucity of studies in the tropics, we evaluated the response of a montane bird community t...

Body Condition Indices Predict Reproductive Success but Not Survival in a Sedentary, Tropical Bird

Body condition may predict individual fitness because those in better condition have more resources to allocate towards improving their fitness. However, the hypothesis that condition indices are meaningful proxies for fitness has been questioned. Here, we ask if intraspecific variation in condition indices predicts annual reproductive success and survival. We monitored a population of Neochmia...