The challenge of novel abiotic conditions for species undergoing climate‐induced range shifts

Abstract

Coincident with recent global warming, species have shifted their geographic distributions to cooler environments, generally by moving along thermal axes to higher latitudes, higher elevations or deeper waters. While these shifts allow organisms to track their thermal niche, these three thermal axes also covary with non‐climatic abiotic factors that could pose challenges to range‐shifting plants and animals. Such novel abiotic conditions also present an unappreciated pitfall for researchers – from both empirical and predictive viewpoints – who study the redistribution of species under global climate change. Climate, particularly temperature, is often assumed to be the primary abiotic factor in limiting species distributions, and decades of thermal biology research have made the correlative and mechanistic understanding of temperature the most accessible and commonly used response to any abiotic factor. Receiving far less attention, however, is that global gradients in oxygen, light, pressure, pH and water availability also covary with latitude, elevation, and/or ocean depth, and species show strong physiological and behavioral adaptations to these abiotic variables within their historic ranges. Here, we discuss how non‐climatic abiotic factors may disrupt climate‐driven range shifts, as well as the variety of adaptations species use to overcome abiotic conditions, emphasizing which taxa may be most limited in this capacity. We highlight the need for scientists to extend their research to incorporate non‐climatic, abiotic factors to create a more ecologically relevant understanding of how plants and animals interact with the environment, particularly in the face of global climate change. We demonstrate how additional abiotic gradients can be integrated into global climate change biology to better inform expectations and provide recommendations for addressing the challenge of predicting future species distributions in novel environments.

Body size and environment influence both intraspecific and interspecific variation in daily torpor use across hummingbirds

“…In the face of unprecedented environmental change, understanding the full breadth of responses, from an individual's phenotypic plasticity (Valladares et al, 2014) to a species' evolutionary capacity (Diamond, 2018), is of increasing importance to biologists. With the rise of mechanistic distribution models (Kearney & Porter, 2008), for example, the ability to predict where species will move in the future, using accurate and realistic physiological data—particularly data on energetics—has the potential to help ecologists, conservation biologists and land managers (Spence & Tingley, 2020). By sampling more broadly from species that are accessible to scientists, we not only learn more about the natural scale of variability within species but also find patterns among species to fill in knowledge gaps for less accessible taxa.…”

Growth of marine ectotherms is regionally constrained and asymmetric with latitude

“…Macroecological approaches to examine growth rates of important marine ectotherms, as used here, form an essential link between laboratory experiments and appropriate regionally adjusted assessment of risk (Chown, Gaston, & Robinson, 2004; Chown, Sinclair, et al, 2004). The nonlinear relationship of OGP with temperature and latitude suggests that other ecological and phylogenetic constraints will exist across a latitudinal gradient and between ecological realms (Parmesan & Yohe, 2003), but these may be underestimated or ignored when traditional assumptions on thermal relationships are applied in isolation (Spence & Tingley, 2020). This carries implications for the way we assess physiological responses to climate change scenarios (Clarke, 2003; Feder et al., 2000) as the consequences of climate change will differ at local scales (Stuart‐Smith et al., 2015), or across species distributions (Deutsch et al, 2020).…”

“…Further, some fundamental physiological assumptions, such as variation in life span (Moss et al., 2016), metabolic rates (Heilmayer et al., 2004), growth (Pörtner et al., 2005), and acclimation capacity (Seebacher et al., 2014) over wide geographical ranges are based on data with poor spatial resolution and/or are fitted with curvilinear models that do not adequately account for variation in regional environmental conditions. However, incorporation of local processes is vital, as environmental history and setting affects how individuals respond to altered environmental conditions (Calosi et al., 2016; Deutsch et al, 2020; Gladstone‐Gallagher et al., 2019; Spence & Tingley, 2020) and affects ecosystem functioning (Godbold & Solan, 2013; Wohlgemuth et al., 2016).…”

Combining range and phenology shifts offers a winning strategy for boreal Lepidoptera

“…Such shifts in phenology have often been shown to be related with positive population trends and increased demographic stability (Cleland et al 2007;Møller et al 2008;Saino et al 2011;Frankset al 2018). Range shifting towards cooler areas is the other main strategy for species to adapt to warmer climatic conditions, both under contemporary and past climate changes (Parmesan et al1999;Davis & Shaw 2001;Donoghue 2008;Spence & Tingley 2020). Species that are able to shift their geographic distribution to track climate change and thus remain within their climatic niches are less likely to suffer population declines and local extinctions (Cooperet al 2011;Devictor et al 2012;Urban 2015).…”