Making mistakes when predicting shifts in species range in response to global warming

Andrew J. Davis (), Linda S. Jenkinson, John H. Lawton, Bryan Shorrocks and Simon Wood
Additional contact information
Andrew J. Davis: Ecology and Evolution Group, The University
Linda S. Jenkinson: Ecology and Evolution Group, The University
John H. Lawton: NERC Centre for Population Biology, Imperial College Silwood Park
Bryan Shorrocks: Ecology and Evolution Group, The University
Simon Wood: NERC Centre for Population Biology, Imperial College Silwood Park

Nature, 1998, vol. 391, issue 6669, 783-786

Abstract: Abstract Many attempts to predict the biotic responses to climate change rely on the ‘climate envelope’ approach1,2,3, in which the current distribution of a species is mapped in climate-space and then, if the position of that climate-space changes, the distribution of the species is predicted to shift accordingly4,5,6. The flaw in this approach is that distributions of species also reflect the influence of interactions with other species7,8,9,10, so predictions based on climate envelopes may be very misleading if the interactions between species are altered by climate change11. An additional problem is that current distributions may be the result of sources and sinks12, in which species appear to thrive in places where they really persist only because individuals disperse into them from elsewhere13,14. Here we use microcosm experiments on simple but realistic assemblages to show how misleading the climate envelope approach can be. We show that dispersal and interactions, which are important elements of population dynamics15, must be included in predictions of biotic responses to climate change.

Date: 1998
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (24)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/35842 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:391:y:1998:i:6669:d:10.1038_35842

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/35842

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().