Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Palmer, Georgina
• Hill, Jane K
• Brereton, Tom M
• Brooks, David R
• Chapman, Jason W
• Fox, Richard
• Oliver, Tom H
• Thomas, Chris D

Titel

Individualistic sensitivities and exposure to climate change explain variation in species' distribution and abundance changes

Ist Teil von

• Science advances, 2015-10, Vol.1 (9), p.e1400220-e1400220

Ort / Verlag

United States: American Association for the Advancement of Science

Erscheinungsjahr

2015

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

EZB Electronic Journals Library

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• The responses of animals and plants to recent climate change vary greatly from species to species, but attempts to understand this variation have met with limited success. This has led to concerns that predictions of responses are inherently uncertain because of the complexity of interacting drivers and biotic interactions. However, we show for an exemplar group of 155 Lepidoptera species that about 60% of the variation among species in their abundance trends over the past four decades can be explained by species-specific exposure and sensitivity to climate change. Distribution changes were less well predicted, but nonetheless, up to 53% of the variation was explained. We found that species vary in their overall sensitivity to climate and respond to different components of the climate despite ostensibly experiencing the same climate changes. Hence, species have undergone different levels of population "forcing" (exposure), driving variation among species in their national-scale abundance and distribution trends. We conclude that variation in species' responses to recent climate change may be more predictable than previously recognized.