Seabird Range Contraction and Dispersal Under Climate Change
Climate history of 120 seabird species shows warming pace — not magnitude — drives range loss and dispersal, with 4 species facing extinction by 2100.
Albatrosses, petrels, shearwaters, and storm petrels have navigated every major climate upheaval since the late Cretaceous — outlasting glaciations, ocean reorganizations, and the slow breakup of continents beneath them.
Avaria-Llautureo et al. (2026) exploit that deep evolutionary record, tracing 120 Procellariiformes species across 500 phylogenetic trees and 65 million years of paleotemperature history, to ask what their archive of responses reveals about vulnerability to modern warming.
The finding that emerges is not about temperature direction but about temperature speed — and on that measure, these ocean wanderers are facing something their entire evolutionary history did not prepare them for.
Key Findings
Range, not body size, was the historical adapter
Across the full evolutionary history of the order, body mass tracked range size far more closely than it tracked local temperature. LT explained only ~6% of body mass variation, while range size had a dominant positive effect — species holding larger ranges tended to be larger-bodied. The body-size reductions commonly observed in marine ectotherms under warming do not appear to be the primary survival strategy for this group.
Warming compressed ranges — and faster warming compressed them more
Warmer local temperatures (mean slope −0.81, pMCMC >95%) and higher rates of temperature change (mean slope −1.65, pMCMC >95%) both significantly predicted smaller range sizes, with body mass adding a positive correction (mean slope 0.38, pMCMC >95%). Together, the variable-rate PGLS model explained 67% of variance in range size — showing the pace of local temperature change has historically been the dominant constraint on where these birds can live.
Speed of warming drives dispersal, but small-range species pay the highest price
Species experiencing faster historical warming dispersed farther, but this effect was strongly moderated by prior range size. Geographically restricted species were disproportionately sensitive to the rate of climate change, moving greater distances in response. The interaction between LT_RATE and range size alone explained 8% of dispersal variance; the full model accounted for 59%, with LT_RATE and range size contributing 21% and 1% respectively. The species with the least room to absorb change face the greatest pressure to move.
Current warming is four orders of magnitude faster than the historical adaptation rate
The median rate at which Procellariiformes lineages historically tracked climate was approximately 2.2 × 10⁻⁵ °C per decade — roughly four orders of magnitude slower than the current 0.13°C of warming per decade. Every historical dispersal response was calibrated to a world moving at a completely different speed.
Over 70% of species contract under high emissions, four face extinction
Species distribution models to 2100 show that under RCP 8.5, more than 70% of extant Procellariiformes experience range contraction, with larger contractions correlating with greater required dispersal distances. Four species — the Galápagos Petrel, Jouanin's Petrel, Newell's Shearwater, and White-vented Storm Petrel — are projected to face extinction under severe warming scenarios.
Wings Across Deep Time, Clipped by the Speed of Now
Procellariiformes have crossed every ocean and outlasted every ice age — their evolutionary history is a record of what patient, incremental adaptation can achieve across geological time. But Avaria-Llautureo et al. make clear that every one of those responses unfolded at a pace four orders of magnitude slower than the warming now underway.
The birds that wandered farthest when climates shifted were precisely those already squeezed into the smallest ranges — and it is exactly those species that the current rate of change is pushing hardest.
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