Macroecological context predicts species' responses to climate warming

Abstract

Context‐dependencies in species' responses to the same climate change frustrate attempts to generalize and make predictions based on experimental and observational approaches in biodiversity science. Here, we propose predictability may be enhanced by explicitly incorporating macroecological context into analyses of species' responses to climate manipulations. We combined vascular plant species' responses to an 8‐year, 12‐site turf transplant climate change experiment set in southwestern Norway with climate niche data from the observed 151 species. We used the difference between a species' mean climate across their range and climate conditions at the transplant site (“climate differences”) to predict colonization probability, extinction probability, and change in abundance of a species at a site. In analyses across species that ignore species‐specific patterns, colonization success increased as species' distribution optima were increasingly warmer than the experimental target site. Extinction probability increased as species' distribution optima were increasingly colder than the target site. These patterns were reflected in change in abundance analyses. We found weak responses to increased precipitation in these oceanic climates. Climate differences were better predictors of species' responses to climate manipulations than range size. Interestingly, similar patterns were found when analyses focused on variation in species‐specific responses across sites. These results provide an experimental underpinning to observational studies that report thermophilization of communities and suggest that space‐for‐time substitutions may be valid for predicting species' responses to climate warming, given other conditions are accounted for (e.g., soil nutrients). Finally, we suggest that this method of putting climate change experiments into macroecological context has the potential to generalize and predict species' responses to climate manipulations globally.

DNA Methylation Can Mediate Local Adaptation and Response to Climate Change in the Clonal Plant Fragaria vesca: Evidence From a European-Scale Reciprocal Transplant Experiment

“…Plant response to climatic shifts might also depend on the species’ distribution optima. In fact, colonization success has been shown to increase for species with warmer distribution optima than the target site, and to decrease for species with colder distribution optima ( Reich et al, 2015 ; Liu et al, 2018 ; Lynn et al, 2021 ). We are not able to completely disentangle the temperature and precipitations effects on plant survival due to the correlation between the two factors.…”

Large‐scale spatial variability in urban tolerance of birds

“…Alternatively, spatial variability of urban tolerance could be driven from top‐down effects such as large macroecological patterns influencing the local‐level adaptations to urban environments. In other words, macroecological variables such as aridity, climate, temperature, precipitation, which influence a species' niche (Gouveia et al, 2014; Lynn et al, 2021) also work in concert to lead to spatial variability in urban tolerance across the United States. We explored this using an analysis where species were nested within ecoregion and found that indeed, ecoregion explained a large portion of the intraspecific variability, but interspecific variability was still greater than intra‐ecoregion effects (see Tables S4 and S5 for details).…”

Climate warming has compounded plant responses to habitat conversion in northern Europe

“…Second, relatively cold-climate species can over time have shifted to occupy grid squares that are cooler on average (in terms of reference period temperatures), as they are gradually extirpated from the (relatively) warmer areas of their ranges 25 , 26 . Cold-climate species have also been demonstrated to be particularly susceptible to climate warming in experimental settings 27 , 28 . Such extirpations could be due to temperatures becoming unsuitably high, but the pattern might also be exhibited by cold-climate species declining for other reasons that result in a retraction to the core (cool) area of the range.…”