Ecol. Lett. http://doi.org/m6k (2013)

Species adapt to changing environmental conditions. Nevertheless, a significant concern remains as to whether such adaptations can occur fast enough to avert the worst ecological impacts of climate change. Ignacio Quintero from Yale University and John J. Wiens from the University of Arizona, USA, investigate this question by studying evolutionary relationships (phylogenies) among the main vertebrate animal groups. They estimate rates of adaptive change based on differences in climatic variables between closely related species and estimated times of evolutionary splitting. They then compare these adaptive change estimates with predicted rates of climate change to 2100.

The results show a striking mismatch between past rates of evolution and projected twenty-first-century climate change. To keep pace with future rates of climate change, unprecedented niche evolution rates (more than 10,000 times faster than those typically observed) would be required.