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Heat and desiccation tolerances predict bee abundance under climate change
A 16-year dataset of abundance patterns of a diverse assemblage of bees in New Mexico, USA predicts declines for many bee species and indicates that drought-tolerant taxa will prevail in a warming and drying climate.
- Melanie R. Kazenel
- , Karen W. Wright
- & Jennifer A. Rudgers
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Trait-based sensitivity of large mammals to a catastrophic tropical cyclone
A study that tracked mammal populations before, during and after a severe storm in Mozambique’s Gorongosa National Park finds that behavioural responses and survival are linked to body size, with increased mortality of small species owing to limited mobility and changes in food availability.
- Reena H. Walker
- , Matthew C. Hutchinson
- & Ryan A. Long
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Projected decline in European bumblebee populations in the twenty-first century
A quantitative study of past, present and future ecological suitability of Europe for bumblebees finds that for 38–76% of species now considered non-threatened, suitable territory could decrease by at least 30% by 2061–2080.
- Guillaume Ghisbain
- , Wim Thiery
- & Simon Dellicour
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Marine heatwaves are not a dominant driver of change in demersal fishes
Of 248 marine heatwaves between 1993 and 2019 in North American and European seas, the effects on fish biomass were often minimal, and the heatwaves were not consistently associated with tropicalization or deborealization.
- Alexa L. Fredston
- , William W. L. Cheung
- & Malin L. Pinsky
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Widespread retreat of coastal habitat is likely at warming levels above 1.5 °C
Without mitigation, relative sea-level rises under current climate change projections will exceed the capacity of coastal habitats such as mangroves and tidal marshes to adjust, leading to instability and profound changes to coastal ecosystems.
- Neil Saintilan
- , Benjamin Horton
- & Glenn Guntenspergen
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Tropical forests are approaching critical temperature thresholds
Ground truthed thermal data from a new NASA satellite combined with experimental warming data from three continents in an empirical model suggests that tropical forests are closer to a high temperature threshold than previously thought.
- Christopher E. Doughty
- , Jenna M. Keany
- & Joshua B. Fisher
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Future emergence of new ecosystems caused by glacial retreat
By 2100, the decline of all glaciers outside the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets will produce new terrestrial, marine and freshwater ecosystems, posing both challenges and opportunities for conservation.
- J. B. Bosson
- , M. Huss
- & F. Arthaud
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Coral reefs benefit from reduced land–sea impacts under ocean warming
Surveys of reef change are combined with a unique 20-year time series of land–sea human impacts and the results show that integrated land–sea management could help achieve coastal ocean conservation goals and provide coral reefs with the best opportunity to persist in our changing climate.
- Jamison M. Gove
- , Gareth J. Williams
- & Gregory P. Asner
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Global climate-change trends detected in indicators of ocean ecology
An analysis of satellite data from July 2002–June 2022 shows that ocean colour, or remote-sensing reflectance, changed significantly during this period, and that this trend is likely to be driven by climate change.
- B. B. Cael
- , Kelsey Bisson
- & Stephanie Henson
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Continent-wide declines in shallow reef life over a decade of ocean warming
A systematic census at 1,636 sites around Australia from 2008 to 2021 finds that more than 30% of shallow invertebrate species in cool latitudes exhibit a high extinction risk due to declining populations and oceanic barriers, but tropical coral species remain relatively stable.
- Graham J. Edgar
- , Rick D. Stuart-Smith
- & Amanda E. Bates
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The carbon sink of secondary and degraded humid tropical forests
Analysis of satellite-based data on recovering degraded and secondary forests in three tropical moist forest regions quantifies the amount of aboveground carbon accumulated, which counterbalanced one quarter of carbon emissions from old-growth forest loss between 1984 and 2018.
- Viola H. A. Heinrich
- , Christelle Vancutsem
- & Luiz E. O. C. Aragão
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Effects of moisture and density-dependent interactions on tropical tree diversity
Moist soil strengthens density-dependent mortality with long-lasting effects on species diversity of tropical trees.
- Edwin Lebrija-Trejos
- , Andrés Hernández
- & S. Joseph Wright
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Future temperature extremes threaten land vertebrates
Future extreme thermal events will force many vertebrate species and assemblages into constant severe thermal stress; however, lowering emissions would greatly reduce overall exposures.
- Gopal Murali
- , Takuya Iwamura
- & Uri Roll
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Small rainfall changes drive substantial changes in plant coexistence
Reduced precipitation changes competitive outcomes among plant species, and species pairs that were functionally more similar were less likely to experience these changes.
- Mary N. Van Dyke
- , Jonathan M. Levine
- & Nathan J. B. Kraft
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Extreme escalation of heat failure rates in ectotherms with global warming
Within the stressful temperature range, heat failure rate increases by more than 100% per degree Celsius across a broad range of ectotherm taxa.
- Lisa Bjerregaard Jørgensen
- , Michael Ørsted
- & Johannes Overgaard
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Sufficient conditions for rapid range expansion of a boreal conifer
A boreal conifer is advancing northwards into Arctic tundra, with this treeline advance facilitated by climate warming together with winter winds, deeper snow and increased soil nutrient availability.
- Roman J. Dial
- , Colin T. Maher
- & Patrick F. Sullivan
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Warm springs alter timing but not total growth of temperate deciduous trees
Warmer spring temperatures affect the timing of stem diameter growth of temperate deciduous trees but have little effect on annual growth.
- Cameron Dow
- , Albert Y. Kim
- & Kristina J. Anderson-Teixeira
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Even modest climate change may lead to major transitions in boreal forests
The survival of southern boreal tree saplings decreases in response to even modest warming and reduced rainfall, which,together with species-specific growth responses, could lead to regeneration failure of currently dominant tree species.
- Peter B. Reich
- , Raimundo Bermudez
- & Artur Stefanski
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Emerging signals of declining forest resilience under climate change
- Giovanni Forzieri
- , Vasilis Dakos
- & Alessandro Cescatti
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Tropical tree mortality has increased with rising atmospheric water stress
Over the past 35 years, annual tree mortality risk has increased in the moist tropical forests of Australia and is associated with increased atmospheric water stress.
- David Bauman
- , Claire Fortunel
- & Sean M. McMahon
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Expanding ocean food production under climate change
Sustainable mariculture could increase seafood production under almost all climate-change scenarios analysed, but this would require substantial fisheries reforms, continued advances in feed technology and the establishment of effective mariculture governance and best practices.
- Christopher M. Free
- , Reniel B. Cabral
- & Steven D. Gaines
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Agriculture and climate change are reshaping insect biodiversity worldwide
Interaction between climate warming and intensive agricultural land use is associated with reductions in insect abundance and species richness, which can be mitigated by nearby natural habitats in low-intensity agricultural settings.
- Charlotte L. Outhwaite
- , Peter McCann
- & Tim Newbold
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Perspective |
Biogeochemical extremes and compound events in the ocean
High-temperature, high-acidity and low-oxygen extremes may pose a particular threat to marine ecosystems, requiring a major effort to understand them and the ability of marine life to respond to them.
- Nicolas Gruber
- , Philip W. Boyd
- & Meike Vogt
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RETRACTED ARTICLE: A constraint on historic growth in global photosynthesis due to increasing CO2
An emergent constraint combining biosphere models and carbon budget estimates suggests that the increase in the global terrestrial carbon sink is caused largely by a CO2-induced increase in photosynthesis.
- T. F. Keenan
- , X. Luo
- & S. Zhou
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Matters Arising |
Reply to: Spatial scale and the synchrony of ecological disruption
- Christopher H. Trisos
- , Cory Merow
- & Alex L. Pigot
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Late Quaternary dynamics of Arctic biota from ancient environmental genomics
A large-scale metagenomic analysis of plant and mammal environmental DNA reveals complex ecological changes across the circumpolar region over the past 50,000 years, as biota responded to changing climates, culminating in the postglacial extinction of large mammals and emergence of modern ecosystems.
- Yucheng Wang
- , Mikkel Winther Pedersen
- & Eske Willerslev
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Limited potential for bird migration to disperse plants to cooler latitudes
Interactions between European bird and plant species show that fruiting period has a major effect on seed dispersal by migrating birds, which will influence plant adaptations to climate change through latitudinal dispersal.
- Juan P. González-Varo
- , Beatriz Rumeu
- & Anna Traveset
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A trade-off between plant and soil carbon storage under elevated CO2
A synthesis of elevated carbon dioxide experiments reveals that when plant biomass is strongly stimulated by elevated carbon dioxide levels, soil carbon storage declines, and where biomass is weakly stimulated, soil carbon accumulates.
- C. Terrer
- , R. P. Phillips
- & R. B. Jackson
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Warming impairs trophic transfer efficiency in a long-term field experiment
In artificial ponds exposed to seven years of experimental warming, energy transfer between two trophic levels of freshwater plankton decreased by 56% and the biomass of both levels was reduced.
- Diego R. Barneche
- , Chris J. Hulatt
- & Gabriel Yvon-Durocher
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Matters Arising |
Reply to: Methods matter in repeating ocean acidification studies
- Timothy D. Clark
- , Graham D. Raby
- & Josefin Sundin
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Matters Arising |
Methods matter in repeating ocean acidification studies
- Philip L. Munday
- , Danielle L. Dixson
- & Sue-Ann Watson
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The fate of carbon in a mature forest under carbon dioxide enrichment
Carbon dioxide enrichment of a mature forest resulted in the emission of the excess carbon back into the atmosphere via enhanced ecosystem respiration, suggesting that mature forests may be limited in their capacity to mitigate climate change.
- Mingkai Jiang
- , Belinda E. Medlyn
- & David S. Ellsworth
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Intensive farming drives long-term shifts in avian community composition
Variation in vegetation and climate affects the long-term changes in bird communities in intensive-agriculture habitats, but not in diversified-agriculture or natural-forest habitats, by changing the local colonization and extinction rates.
- J. Nicholas Hendershot
- , Jeffrey R. Smith
- & Gretchen C. Daily
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Ocean acidification does not impair the behaviour of coral reef fishes
In contrast to previous studies, analyses now show that ocean acidification does not perturb important behaviours—such as the avoidance of chemical cues from predators—of coral reef fishes.
- Timothy D. Clark
- , Graham D. Raby
- & Josefin Sundin
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Letter |
Global change drives modern plankton communities away from the pre-industrial state
Seafloor-derived planktonic foraminifera communities of pre-industrial age are compared with communities from sediment-trap time series and show that Anthropocene communities of a globally distributed zooplankton group differ from their unperturbed pre-industrial state.
- Lukas Jonkers
- , Helmut Hillebrand
- & Michal Kucera
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Letter |
Greater vulnerability to warming of marine versus terrestrial ectotherms
Comparisons across terrestrial and marine ectotherms reveal that marine species experience temperatures closer to their upper thermal limits, and that local extirpations related to warming are more common in the ocean.
- Malin L. Pinsky
- , Anne Maria Eikeset
- & Jennifer M. Sunday
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Letter |
Global warming impairs stock–recruitment dynamics of corals
A regional-scale shift in the relationships between adult stock and recruitment of corals occurred along the Great Barrier Reef, following mass bleaching events in 2016 and 2017 caused by global warming.
- Terry P. Hughes
- , James T. Kerry
- & Rachael M. Woods
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Letter |
Climate–land-use interactions shape tropical mountain biodiversity and ecosystem functions
Elevational trends in biodiversity and ecosystem functions across natural and anthropogenic habitats on Mount Kilimanjaro show that the effects of land use are strongly mediated by climate.
- Marcell K. Peters
- , Andreas Hemp
- & Ingolf Steffan-Dewenter
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Letter |
Wetland carbon storage controlled by millennial-scale variation in relative sea-level rise
Wetlands exposed to rapid sea-level rise over the late Holocene contain more soil carbon than those that experienced a long period of sea-level stability.
- Kerrylee Rogers
- , Jeffrey J. Kelleway
- & Colin D. Woodroffe
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Widespread but heterogeneous responses of Andean forests to climate change
With global warming, Andean forests are changing to include more trees of low-elevation, heat-loving species but rates of compositional change are not uniform across elevations and are insufficient to keep species in equilibrium with climate.
- Belén Fadrique
- , Selene Báez
- & Kenneth J. Feeley
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Widespread seasonal compensation effects of spring warming on northern plant productivity
Widespread but contrasting delayed responses of ecosystem productivity to spring warmth across northern ecosystems is inferred from satellite data, with higher areal fractions of adverse effects than beneficial effects.
- Wolfgang Buermann
- , Matthias Forkel
- & Andrew D. Richardson
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Plant functional trait change across a warming tundra biome
Analyses of the relationships between temperature, moisture and seven key plant functional traits across the tundra and over time show that community height increased with warming across all sites, whereas other traits lagged behind predicted rates of change.
- Anne D. Bjorkman
- , Isla H. Myers-Smith
- & Evan Weiher
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Letter |
Hydraulic diversity of forests regulates ecosystem resilience during drought
The diversity in the hydraulic traits of trees mediates ecosystem resilience to drought and will probably have an important role in future ecosystem–atmosphere feedback effects.
- William R. L. Anderegg
- , Alexandra G. Konings
- & Nicole Zenes
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Ecosystem warming extends vegetation activity but heightens vulnerability to cold temperatures
Experimental whole-ecosystem warming treatments of a Picea–Sphagnum peat bog reveal the likely phenological consequences of future temperature increases that exceed those of historical climate regimes.
- Andrew D. Richardson
- , Koen Hufkens
- & Paul J. Hanson
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Letter |
Global land change from 1982 to 2016
Satellite data for the period 1982–2016 reveal changes in land use and land cover at global and regional scales that reflect patterns of land change indicative of a human-dominated Earth system.
- Xiao-Peng Song
- , Matthew C. Hansen
- & John R. Townshend
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Letter |
Ecosystem restructuring along the Great Barrier Reef following mass coral bleaching
Fish and invertebrate communities transformed across the span of the Great Barrier Reef following the 2016 bleaching event due to a decline in coral-feeding fishes resulting from coral loss, and because of different regional responses of key trophic groups to the direct effect of temperature.
- Rick D. Stuart-Smith
- , Christopher J. Brown
- & Graham J. Edgar
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Letter |
Global warming transforms coral reef assemblages
Acute heat stress from the extended marine heatwave of 2016 is a potent driver of the transformation of coral assemblages, which affects even the most remote and well-protected reefs of the Great Barrier Reef.
- Terry P. Hughes
- , James T. Kerry
- & Gergely Torda
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Letter |
Accelerated increase in plant species richness on mountain summits is linked to warming
Analysis of changes in plant species richness on mountain summits over the past 145 years suggests that increased climatic warming has led to an acceleration in species richness increase.
- Manuel J. Steinbauer
- , John-Arvid Grytnes
- & Sonja Wipf
Environmental drivers of increased ecosystem respiration in a warming tundra
Spatial scale and the synchrony of ecological disruption