Abstract
Ecological Niche Models (ENMs) have different performances in predicting potential geographic distributions. Here we meta-analyzed the likely effects of climate change on the potential geographic distribution of 1,205 bird species from the Neotropical region, modeled using eight ENMs and three Atmosphere-Ocean General Circulation Models (AOGCM). We considered the variability in ENMs performance to estimate a weighted mean difference between potential geographic distributions for baseline and future climates. On average, potential future ranges were projected to be from 25.7% to 44.5% smaller than current potential ranges across species. However, we found that 0.2% to 18.3% of the total variance in range shifts occurred "within species" (i.e., owing to the use of different modeling techniques and climate models) and 81.7% to 99.8% remained between species (i.e., it could be explained by ecological correlates). Using meta-analytical techniques akin to regression, we also showed that potential range shifts are barely predicted by bird biological traits. We demonstrated that one can combine and reduce species-specific effects with high uncertainty in ENMs and also explore potential causes of climate change effect on species using meta-analytical tools. We also highlight that the search for powerful correlates of climate change-induced range shifts can be a promising line of investigation.