Ecological and methodological drivers of species’ distribution and phenology responses to climate change

Abstract

Climate change is shifting species' distribution and phenology. Ecological traits, such as mobility or reproductive mode, explain variation in observed rates of shift for some taxa. However, estimates of relationships between traits and climate responses could be influenced by how responses are measured. We compiled a global dataset of 651 published marine species' responses to climate change, from 47 papers on distribution shifts and 32 papers on phenology change. We assessed the relative importance of two classes of predictors of the rate of change, ecological traits of the responding taxa and methodological approaches for quantifying biological responses. Methodological differences explained 22% of the variation in range shifts, more than the 7.8% of the variation explained by ecological traits. For phenology change, methodological approaches accounted for 4% of the variation in measurements, whereas 8% of the variation was explained by ecological traits. Our ability to predict responses from traits was hindered by poor representation of species from the tropics, where temperature isotherms are moving most rapidly. Thus, the mean rate of distribution change may be underestimated by this and other global syntheses. Our analyses indicate that methodological approaches should be explicitly considered when designing, analysing and comparing results among studies. To improve climate impact studies, we recommend that: (1) re-analyses of existing time-series state how the existing datasets may limit the inferences about possible climate responses; (2) qualitative comparisons of species' responses across different studies be limited to studies with similar methodological approaches; (3) meta-analyses of climate responses include methodological attributes as covariates and; (4) that new time series be designed to include detection of early warnings of change or ecologically relevant change. Greater consideration of methodological attributes will improve the accuracy of analyses that seek to quantify the role of climate change in species' distribution and phenology changes.

Moving beyond presence and absence when examining changes in species distributions

“…In all cases, focusing on abundance is likely to give a different picture of climate change impacts than simply presence or absence (Fig. The results are not necessarily comparable in meta-analyses unless differences in sampling methodologies are explicitly catered for (Brown et al, 2016). Studies of range shifts that focus on means or centroids of ranges (e.g.…”

Identifying shifts in maternity den phenology and habitat characteristics of polar bears (Ursus maritimus) in Baffin Bay and Kane Basin

“…The majority of previous phenological studies required long term monitoring and years of observations in order to make the connection between detected phenology shifts and environmental modifications brought on by climate change. A minimum of 19 to 20 years of data is recommended for studies examining the biological impact of climate change (Rosenzweig et al 2008;Brown et al 2015). Though our data spans 24 years and meets the requirement, the detected phenological shift in Baffin Bay cannot be fully attributed to climate change rather than annual variability just yet.…”

Late Miocene Pseudolarix amabilis bract-scale complex from Zhejiang, East China

“…Under niche stability, plants shift their distribution in response to climate change as species move into newly favourable territories and retreat from increasingly hostile areas [44–46]. Therefore, the extinction of P .…”