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Reply to: Spatial scale and the synchrony of ecological disruption

Nature volume 599, pages E11–E13 (2021)Cite this article

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The Original Article was published on 24 November 2021

replying to R. K. Colwell. Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03760-4 (2021)

In the accompanying Comment1, Colwell states that mechanisms such as evolution, range shifts, and localized climate refugia may enhance species persistence under climate warming, and that these mechanisms will be more likely to operate within larger spatial grains and mountainous regions. We agree that these mechanisms have important roles, and discussed each of them in our Article2. However, Colwell does not provide any quantitative evidence to support the claim that our analysis overestimates the risk of abrupt climate exposure and presents a highly selective set of factors that are unlikely to have directionally biased our results. Here we explain why our conclusions are robust to the oversimplified subset of mechanisms discussed by Colwell and highlight why we believe that the species exposure models (SEMs) that we introduced are an important step forward in ecological forecasting.

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Fig. 1: Abrupt exposure is a general pattern and not an artefact of homogenizing mountain regions.

Data availability

Elevation data are publicly available from https://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/mgg/global/. Code and data to reproduce Fig. 1 are available at Figshare (https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.14730501).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. African Climate and Development Initiative, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa

    Christopher H. Trisos

  2. National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC), Annapolis, MD, USA

    Christopher H. Trisos

  3. Centre for Statistics in Ecology, the Environment, and Conservation, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa

    Christopher H. Trisos

  4. Eversource Energy Center and Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA

    Cory Merow

  5. Centre for Biodiversity and Environment Research, Department of Genetics, Evolution and Environment, University College London, London, UK

    Alex L. Pigot

Authors
  1. Christopher H. Trisos
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  2. Cory Merow
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  3. Alex L. Pigot
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A.L.P., C.H.T. and C.M. contributed to writing the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Alex L. Pigot.

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Trisos, C.H., Merow, C. & Pigot, A.L. Reply to: Spatial scale and the synchrony of ecological disruption. Nature 599, E11–E13 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03760-4

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