LONG-TERM MONITORING OF THE EUROPEAN ROLLER (CORACIAS GARRULUS) IN UKRAINE: IS CLIMATE BEHIND THE CHANGES?

Since the 1980s there has been a long-term decline in numbers and contraction of range in Europe, including Ukraine. Our specific goals were to reconstruct the climatically suitable range of the species in Ukraine before the 1980s, gain better knowledge on its requirements, compare the past and current suitable areas, infer the regional and environmental variables that best explain its occurrence, and quantify the overall range change in the country. For these purposes we created a database consisting of 347 records of the roller made ever in Ukraine. We employed a species distribution modeling (SDM) approach to hindcast changes in the suitable range of the roller during historical times across Ukraine and to derive spatially explicit predictions of climatic suitability for the species under current climate. SDMs were created for three time intervals (before 1980, 1985-2009, 2010-2021) using corresponding climate data extracted from the TerraClim database. SDMs show a decline of suitable for rollers areas in the country from 85 to 46%. Several factors, including land cover and use, human population density and climate, that could have contributed to the decline of the species in Ukraine were considered. We suggest climate change and its speed (velocity) have been responsible for shaping the contemporary home range of the European roller.