The threat of global climate change challenges community ecologists to
predict long-term and continental-scale changes in the structure of e
cological communities. However, the vast majority of studies have been
done at small temporal and spatial scales. Can conclusions about comm
unity dynamics based on small-scale studies be extrapolated to larger
spatial and temporal scales? We compared the dynamics of regionally co
existing bird species over different spatial and temporal scales using
data from the North American Breeding Bird Survey. We found that such
extrapolation is suspect. Bird species that had similar local year-to
-year population fluctuations did not have similar long-term populatio
n trends. Additionally, species that had similar population dynamics i
n one region rarely exhibited similar dynamics in the different region
s where they occurred together.