Study area
Brazil is a continent-sized country of contrasting topographic features
(plain landscapes in the Amazon basin, or mass of ridges and mountain
ranges in the southeast) and a latitudinal extent exceeding the Equator
to the North and the Tropic of Capricorn to the South. Concomitantly,
according to the Köppen classification system, there are three major
climatic types (Alvares et al., 2013): humid subtropical, tropical rainy
and tropical dry. Also, six major terrestrial biomes: Amazonia, Atlantic
Forest, Caatinga, Cerrado, Pampa and Pantanal (IBGE, 2019).
Despite the aforementioned contrasts, and acknowledging the importance
of areas accessibility via dispersal in SDMs (Barve et al., 2011), we
considered Brazil as an orographic continuum for flying species based on
two facts. First, Brazil lacks massive and steeply orographic barriers.
Second, the Brazilian system of rivers includes wide ones, but their
course and level underwent dramatic changes throughout their recent
geological history, limiting their influence in shaping bird species
distributions (Fluck et al., 2020; Santorelli et al., 2018).