Assessing spatial ecological patterns of wild turkey relative abundance across North America

Abstract Land use dynamics compounded by climate change and landscape conversion continues to affect wildlife communities globally. Assessment of species experiencing widespread population declines across their occupied range is useful to understand both the effects of climate and land cover change. We jointly modeled observational data from camera traps and citizen science to assess effects of land cover and climatic variables on wild turkey ( Meleagris gallopavo ) relative abundance across the continental United States. We included spatially varying coefficients to account for the possibility that relationships among environmental features and wild turkey relative abundance vary across the species range. Our results suggest wild turkey relative abundance is marked by distinct spatial patterns across the United States with the greatest relative abundance located in the east and central United States, whereas the west is characterized by variability in relative abundance patterns. Spatially varying responses to climatic variables (mean maximum temperature and annual cumulative precipitation) and vegetation greenness had the strongest effects on relative abundance. Additionally, patterns of relative abundance of wild turkeys varied by ecological region; the eastern forests and Great Plains in the east and central United States exhibited the largest average relative abundance whereas western ecological regions had less dense and more spatially variable relative abundance. The strongest spatial variation in covariate effects was for temperature and precipitation, suggesting that wild turkeys may be adapting to local climatic conditions in ways that would be missed by a global habitat model. We found negative effects of mean maximum temperature and precipitation on wild turkey relative abundance that were strongest in the southern regions of the species range. Given the role of temperature and precipitation regimes highlighted in our study, climate change may pose significant concerns for wild turkeys in the southwest range.