Tropical and Mediterranean biodiversity is disproportionately sensitive to land-use and climate change

Abstract

Global biodiversity is undergoing rapid declines, driven in large part by changes to land use and climate. Global models help to understand the consequences of environmental changes for biodiversity, but tend to neglect important geographical variation in the sensitivity of biodiversity to these changes. Here we test whether biodiversity responses to climate change and land-use change differ among biomes (geographical units that have marked differences in environment and species composition). We find the strongest negative responses to both pressures in tropical biomes and in the Mediterranean. A further analysis points toward similar underlying drivers for the sensitivity to each pressure: we find greater reductions in species richness in the most humandisturbed land uses and more negative predicted responses to climate change in areas of lower climatic seasonality, and in areas where a greater proportion of species are near their upper temperature limit. Within the land uses most heavily modified by humans, reductions in biodiversity were particularly large in regions where humans have come to dominate the land more recently. Our results will help to improve predictions of how biodiversity is likely to change with ongoing climatic and land-use changes, suggesting particularly large declines in the tropics where much future agricultural expansion is expected to occur. This finding could help to inform the development of the post-2020 biodiversity framework, by highlighting the under-studied regions where biodiversity losses are likely to be particularly large.

Mismatch between bird species sensitivity and the protection of intact habitats across the Americas

“…2A), while being lower in temperate and boreal ecoregions. These results align with previous studies that reported a high sensitivity of tropical forest assemblages to even low levels of human pressure (Gibson et al, 2011; Barlow et al, 2016; Newbold et al, 2020).…”

Extinction Risk Assessment of the Greek Endemic Flora

“…We recorded an elevated extinction risk for some taxon-rich genera, such as Allium , Centaurea , Hieracium , and Limonium , for which Greece represents their diversification or diversity center (for at least some of their sections—e.g., [ 83 , 84 ]). The majority of these taxa occur either in coastal or lowland areas, where land-use change due to human activities has been intensifying during the past two decades ( (accessed on 3 September 2020)); [ 85 , 86 ]) leading to habitat loss and degradation, two major factors related to increased extinction rates [ 7 , 12 , 22 ], especially in the Mediterranean [ 85 ]. Currently, only one taxon ( Isoetes heldreichii ) is presumably extinct in Greece [ 87 ], while other taxa that were considered extinct, were recently rediscovered (e.g., [ 88 , 89 ]).…”

An Orchid in Retrograde: Climate-Driven Range Shift Patterns of Ophrys helenae in Greece

“…However, there are always exceptions to the rule; for example, although most of the shifts observed have been northwards and uphill, there are few cases where plants followed in the opposite direction (see [19,21]). This has led to an increase in biotic homogenization all over the globe, since many range-restricted species are experiencing range contractions, while widespread and alien species are gaining ground, due to the intensifying effects of both climate and land-use change [54][55][56][57][58][59][60].…”