Current predictions of extinction risks from climate change vary widely depending on the specific assumptions and geographic and taxonomic focus of each study. I synthesized published studies in ...order to estimate a global mean extinction rate and determine which factors contribute the greatest uncertainty to climate change–induced extinction risks. Results suggest that extinction risks will accelerate with future global temperatures, threatening up to one in six species under current policies. Extinction risks were highest in South America, Australia, and New Zealand, and risks did not vary by taxonomic group. Realistic assumptions about extinction debt and dispersal capacity substantially increased extinction risks. We urgently need to adopt strategies that limit further climate change if we are to avoid an acceleration of global extinctions.
We urgently need to predict species responses to climate change to minimize future biodiversity loss and ensure we do not waste limited resources on ineffective conservation strategies. Currently, ...most predictions of species responses to climate change ignore the potential for evolution. However, evolution can alter species ecological responses, and different aspects of evolution and ecology can interact to produce complex eco‐evolutionary dynamics under climate change. Here we review how evolution could alter ecological responses to climate change on species warm and cool range margins, where evolution could be especially important. We discuss different aspects of evolution in isolation, and then synthesize results to consider how multiple evolutionary processes might interact and affect conservation strategies. On species cool range margins, the evolution of dispersal could increase range expansion rates and allow species to adapt to novel conditions in their new range. However, low genetic variation and genetic drift in small range‐front populations could also slow or halt range expansions. Together, these eco‐evolutionary effects could cause a three‐step, stop‐and‐go expansion pattern for many species. On warm range margins, isolation among populations could maintain high genetic variation that facilitates evolution to novel climates and allows species to persist longer than expected without evolution. This ‘evolutionary extinction debt’ could then prevent other species from shifting their ranges. However, as climate change increases isolation among populations, increasing dispersal mortality could select for decreased dispersal and cause rapid range contractions. Some of these eco‐evolutionary dynamics could explain why many species are not responding to climate change as predicted. We conclude by suggesting that resurveying historical studies that measured trait frequencies, the strength of selection, or heritabilities could be an efficient way to increase our eco‐evolutionary knowledge in climate change biology.
Biologists are often confronted with high levels of unexplained variation when studying the processes that determine genetic and species diversity. Here, we argue that eco-evolutionary interactions ...might often play an important role during colonization and have longstanding effects on populations and communities. Adaptation following colonization can produce a strong positive feedback loop that promotes priority effects and context-dependent trajectories of population or species assembly. We establish how monopolization, and more generally evolution-mediated priority effects, influence ecological patterns at multiple scales of space, time, and biological organization. We then highlight the underappreciated implications for our understanding of population and landscape genetics, adaptive evolution, community diversity, biogeography, and conservation biology. We indicate multiple future directions for research, including extending theory beyond competition.
Eco-evolutionary priority effects during colonization could explain the highly context-dependent patterns of genetic and species diversity observed in nature.
We highlight one such eco-evolutionary priority effect, the monopolization effect, whereby the first colonist to a new patch adapts to local conditions and thereby gains an advantage over later immigrants. This evolution-mediated priority effect suggests explanations for both context-dependent intraspecific population genetics and interspecific community assembly.
Monopolization effects can determine biological patterns not only at biogeographical scales, but also at the finer scales that characterize metapopulations and metacommunities.
Recent advancements are extending this approach beyond competitive interactions to understand more generally how trait evolution affecting any type of interaction might alter population and community assembly dynamics.
•Research into local adaptation at fine spatial scales has received little attention.•We develop new quantitative definitions for microgeographic adaptation and the spatial scale of ...adaptation.•Mechanisms promoting microgeographic adaptation include strong natural selection and reductions in gene flow.•Microgeographic adaptation can fundamentally alter understanding of ecological and evolutionary dynamics.•New frontiers are needed in spatial evolutionary research, particularly the lower spatial bounds of local adaptation.
Local adaptation has been a major focus of evolutionary ecologists working across diverse systems for decades. However, little of this research has explored variation at microgeographic scales because it has often been assumed that high rates of gene flow will prevent adaptive divergence at fine spatial scales. Here, we establish a quantitative definition of microgeographic adaptation based on Wright's dispersal neighborhood that standardizes dispersal abilities, enabling this measure to be compared across species. We use this definition to evaluate growing evidence of evolutionary divergence at fine spatial scales. We identify the main mechanisms known to facilitate this adaptation and highlight illustrative examples of microgeographic evolution in nature. Collectively, this evidence requires that we revisit our understanding of the spatial scale of adaptation and consider how microgeographic adaptation and its driving mechanisms can fundamentally alter ecological and evolutionary dynamics in nature.
New biological models are incorporating the realistic processes underlying biological responses to climate change and other human-caused disturbances. However, these more realistic models require ...detailed information, which is lacking for most species on Earth. Current monitoring efforts mainly document changes in biodiversity, rather than collecting the mechanistic data needed to predict future changes. We describe and prioritize the biological information needed to inform more realistic projections of species' responses to climate change. We also highlight how trait-based approaches and adaptive modeling can leverage sparse data to make broader predictions. We outline a global effort to collect the data necessary to better understand, anticipate, and reduce the damaging effects of climate change on biodiversity.
Predicting the impacts of climate change on species is one of the biggest challenges that ecologists face. Predictions routinely focus on the direct effects of climate change on individual species, ...yet interactions between species can strongly influence how climate change affects organisms at every scale by altering their individual fitness, geographic ranges and the structure and dynamics of their community. Failure to incorporate these interactions limits the ability to predict responses of species to climate change. We propose a framework based on ideas from global-change biology, community ecology, and invasion biology that uses community modules to assess how species interactions shape responses to climate change.
Biotic Multipliers of Climate Change Zarnetske, Phoebe L.; Skelly, David K.; Urban, Mark C.
Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science),
06/2012, Letnik:
336, Številka:
6088
Journal Article
Recenzirano
A focus on species interactions may improve predictions of the effects of climate change on ecosystems.
Many species face uncertain fates under climate change. Some will persist by shifting their ...range or adapting to local conditions, whereas others will be lost to extinction. Efforts to lessen the impacts of climate change on biodiversity depend on accurate forecasts. Most studies aiming to identify likely winners and losers consider species one at a time with a “climate envelope” approach that correlates species' occurrences with climatic and environmental variables. Using this method, researchers have predicted that by 2050, 15 to 37% of species will be faced with extinction (
1
). But which species are most likely to be under threat? And how will their loss affect the broader ecological community?
Urbanization is changing Earth’s ecosystems by altering the interactions and feedbacks between the fundamental ecological and evolutionary processes that maintain life. Humans in cities alter the ...eco-evolutionary play by simultaneously changing both the actors and the stage on which the eco-evolutionary play takes place. Urbanization modifies land surfaces, microclimates, habitat connectivity, ecological networks, food webs, species diversity, and species composition. These environmental changes can lead to changes in phenotypic, genetic, and cultural makeup of wild populations that have important consequences for ecosystem function and the essential services that nature provides to human society, such as nutrient cycling, pollination, seed dispersal, food production, and water and air purification. Understanding and monitoring urbanization-induced evolutionary changes is important to inform strategies to achieve sustainability. In the present article, we propose that understanding these dynamics requires rigorous characterization of urbanizing regions as rapidly evolving, tightly coupled human–natural systems. We explore how the emergent properties of urbanization affect eco-evolutionary dynamics across space and time. We identify five key urban drivers of change—habitat modification, connectivity, heterogeneity, novel disturbances, and biotic interactions—and highlight the direct consequences of urbanization-driven eco-evolutionary change for nature’s contributions to people. Then, we explore five emerging complexities—landscape complexity, urban discontinuities, socio-ecological heterogeneity, cross-scale interactions, legacies and time lags—that need to be tackled in future research. We propose that the evolving metacommunity concept provides a powerful framework to study urban eco-evolutionary dynamics.
The diversity and composition of biological communities might often depend on colonization history because early colonists can exclude future colonists through a priority effect. These priority ...effects, which have been observed across a wide variety of ecosystems, often arise because early colonists have sufficient time to use available resources efficiently and subsequently withhold them from invaders. Here, we explore the extent to which rapid local adaptive evolution contributes to the pervasiveness of these priority effects. Using an individual-based simulation, we show that early colonization allows the descendants of colonists to adapt to novel conditions and reduce the establishment success of an initially ecologically equivalent competing species. Our model predicts that slight differences in colonization timing and adaptive capacity between species can substantially alter the dynamics and diversity of communities. We also show that priority effects and gene flow can generate a novel mechanism for the expansion and retraction of species distributions in a metacommunity. Our results suggest that local adaptation combined with stochastic colonization events can obscure direct relationships between species distributions and environmental gradients. Given the increasing recognition of rapid, microgeographic evolution in natural populations, we expect that evolutionary priority effects could affect the structure and dynamics of many natural metacommunities.
We need accurate predictions about how climate change will alter species distributions and abundances around the world. Most predictions assume simplistic dispersal scenarios and ignore biotic ...interactions. We argue for incorporating the complexities of dispersal and species interactions. Range expansions depend not just on mean dispersal, but also on the shape of the dispersal kernel and the population's growth rate. We show how models using species‐specific dispersal can produce more accurate predictions than models applying all‐or‐nothing dispersal scenarios. Models that additionally include species interactions can generate distinct outcomes. For example, species interactions can slow climate tracking and produce more extinctions than models assuming no interactions. We conclude that (1) just knowing mean dispersal is insufficient to predict biotic responses to climate change, and (2) considering interspecific dispersal variation and species interactions jointly will be necessary to anticipate future changes to biological diversity. We advocate for collecting key information on interspecific dispersal differences and strong biotic interactions so that we can build the more robust predictive models that will be necessary to inform conservation efforts as climates continue to change.
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