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The pace of biodiversity change in a warming climate

The timing of disruptions to biodiversity associated with global warming is a key, but little-explored, dimension of change. Will losses in biodiversity occur all at once, or be spread out over time?
  1. Jennifer M. Sunday

    1. Jennifer M. Sunday is in the Department of Biology, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec H3A 1B1, Canada.

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Projections of the effects of climate change on multiple species are often made by estimating the change predicted for a single future time point; for example, by asking how the geographical distributions of multiple species will differ in 2100 from those today1. However, this approach does not capture the pace, timing or possible synchrony of biodiversity changes across time. Acute synchronous impacts can potentially be more damaging to a system than those spread over time, in terms of both human adaptation to biodiversity losses and ecosystem resilience. Writing in Nature, Trisos et al.2 report an approach for predicting how climate change will affect future biodiversity patterns.

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Nature 580, 460-461 (2020)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-00975-9

References

  1. Warren, R., Price, J., Graham, E., Forstenhaeusler, N. & VanDerWal, J. Science 360, 791–795 (2018).

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  3. Harris, R. M. B. et al. Nature Clim. Change 8, 579–587 (2018).

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