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The impacts of global warming are of concern to all of us. The potential responses of birds to climate change have come increasingly to the fore, and are of particular interest to the ornithological community. Are birds sensitive to climate change and how will they react to a world of global warming? These are the key issues to be explored in this book, with particular reference to Western Palearctic birds. Climate changes that have affected the region in the last two million years will be explored, drawing on published data on fossil birds. A major part of the book will be devoted to the distribution of Western Palearctic birds in relation to bioclimate. The final section of the book looks at migration and the relationship of the Western Palearctic to Africa.
Prof. Clive Finlayson is Director of the Gibraltar Museum. He is an evolutionary ecologist with a DPhil from Oxford. He is a leading exponent of the relationship between climate change and species distributions, and is the author of several books including Neanderthals and Modern Humans (CUP), and Birds of the Straits of Gibraltar (Poyser).
Customer Reviews:
Avian Survivors: The History and Biogeography of Palearctic Birds
by Keith Betton in the United Kingdom (24/01/2012)
It is easy to see that today's bird distributions have changed in the last 100 years. But what were they like 1000 years ago – or maybe 10,000 years ago? In fact what about 1 million years ago or indeed 10 million years ago? There are many questions that we should ask ourselves. For example, why are Tree Sparrows common in Asia and declining in much of Europe? Why are there more species of warblers than there are tits? How do Blackcaps and Garden Warblers manage to live side by side without one ousting the other? Why do Yellow Wagtails migrate long distances while Pied Wagtails hardly move from the territory in which they were born? Some questions can be answered by classifying birds according to their bioclimatic characteristics.
Early chapters in this book explain the major changes in the Palearctic landscape over the last 65 million years through many periods of glaciation and aridity with sea levels often vastly different from what we know today. Not surprisingly it is an area of research with differing opinions. Some believe that many lineages of present-day birds survived the catastrophic event 65 million years ago (known at the K/T Event) when the dinosaurs were driven to extinction. However some people still claim that avian radiation occurred after that. Finlayson discusses the theories and considers each view. He explains that species frequently respond to climate change by moving location to keep to their ideal ecological conditions. However when such changes happen over many thousands of years often the species adapt to their environment – while those that can't adapt become extinct.
Each group of birds is then assessed separately with evidence of their development over time. This part of the book contains a huge amount of information, but there are plenty of interesting facts if you delve deeply into the somewhat heavy text. For example there are two types of Azure-winged Magpie – one in Spain and Portugal, and the other in China, Japan and Korea. Everyone had assumed that those in Europe had been brought back from China by Portuguese sailors. However from fossil remains from Gibraltar have shown that they were there all the time – well at least for 40,000 years!
This is a serious book that will be welcomed by evolutionary ecologists for whom the level of analysis is fascinating, but for most bird enthusiasts it is an area of research that leaves them cold. There are 29 colour photographs, mostly by the author, and the book is packed with statistics. For those that persevere to read it fully there is plenty to learn.
