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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Conserv. Sci.
Sec. Animal Conservation
Volume 6 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fcosc.2025.1520857
This article is part of the Research Topic Long-Term Research on Avian Conservation Ecology in the Age of Global Change and Citizen Science View all 7 articles

Many winners, few losers: stable bird populations on an Afrotropical Mountain amidst climate change

Provisionally accepted
Geoffrey Mwangi Wambugu Geoffrey Mwangi Wambugu 1,2*Laura Martínez-Íñigo Laura Martínez-Íñigo 1Bernard Amakobe Bernard Amakobe 1,2Mwangi Githiru Mwangi Githiru 1,2
  • 1 Wildlife Works, Voi, Kenya
  • 2 Department of Zoology, National Museums of Kenya, Nairobi, Kenya

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Organisms in mountainous areas are frequently exposed to climatic extremes and are among the most vulnerable to climate change. Long-term studies on birds along elevational gradients, which are vital in understanding species dynamics, are rare in tropical mountains, which limits the ability to understand their population trends in the face of climate change.We modelled local abundances of understorey bird species (N=18) over a 13-year period (2011)(2012)(2013)(2014)(2015)(2016)(2017)(2018)(2019)(2020)(2021)(2022)(2023) in Mt. Kasigau, Kenya, using mist netting data collected along an elevational gradient. Our models for species from which we captured more than 20 individuals (N=18)show relatively stable bird abundances in the study period. However, we found two distinct population crashes that affected most species in 2015 and 2022, suggesting that changes in local dynamics may lead to heavy declines of bird populations in mountainous regions. Most species had stable local abundances in the study period, but parametric bootstrapping revealed a declining trend for a few species, including an endemic, threatened species. We highlight the importance of mountainous regions in maintaining relatively stable populations in the face of global environmental transformation such as posed by climate change, and the dynamism of bird species populations across relatively small spatial-temporal variations.While mountain ecosystems are viewed as potential refuges for biodiversity in the face of a warming climate, further studies are needed to understand the drivers of short and longterm declines in bird populations at higher elevations, especially in tropical Africa.

    Keywords: elevational gradient, Afrotropical, Understorey birds, Climate Change, Mount Kasigau

    Received: 01 Nov 2024; Accepted: 13 Jan 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Wambugu, Martínez-Íñigo, Amakobe and Githiru. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Geoffrey Mwangi Wambugu, Wildlife Works, Voi, Kenya

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