Climate-change ecology articles within Nature

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  • Letter |

    The pollination service provided by nocturnal flower visitors is disrupted near streetlamps, which leads to a reduced reproductive output of the plant that cannot be compensated for by day-time pollinators; in addition, the structure of combined nocturnal and diurnal pollination networks facilitates the spread of the consequences of disrupted night-time pollination to daytime pollinators.

    • Eva Knop
    • , Leana Zoller
    •  & Colin Fontaine

  • Article |

    Permanently ice-free areas, home to almost all of Antarctica’s biodiversity, are projected, in the worst case, to expand by over 17,000 km2 as a result of climate change by the end of this century, with potentially deleterious consequences for the continent’s biodiversity.

    • Jasmine R. Lee
    • , Ben Raymond
    •  & Aleks Terauds

  • Article |

    Aerial and underwater survey data combined with satellite-derived measurements of sea surface temperature over the past two decades show that multiple mass-bleaching events have expanded to encompass virtually all of the Great Barrier Reef.

    • Terry P. Hughes
    • , James T. Kerry
    •  & Shaun K. Wilson

  • Letter |

    Examination of the ecosystem properties of treeline ecotones in seven temperate regions of the world shows that the reduction in temperature with increasing elevation does not affect tree leaf nutrient concentrations, but does reduce ground-layer community-weighted plant nitrogen levels, leading to a strong stoichiometric convergence of ground-layer plant community nitrogen to phosphorus ratios across all regions.

    • Jordan R. Mayor
    • , Nathan J. Sanders
    •  & David A. Wardle

  • Letter |

    Empirically validated mathematical models show that a combination of intraspecific competition between subterranean social-insect colonies and scale-dependent feedbacks between plants can explain the spatially periodic vegetation patterns observed in many landscapes, such as the Namib Desert ‘fairy circles’.

    • Corina E. Tarnita
    • , Juan A. Bonachela
    •  & Robert M. Pringle

  • Article |

    An ambitious study has used more than 10,000 datasets to examine how the phenological characteristics—such as the timing of reproduction—of various taxa alter in response to climate change, and suggests that differing levels of climate sensitivity could lead to the desynchronization of seasonal events over time.

    • Stephen J. Thackeray
    • , Peter A. Henrys
    •  & Sarah Wanless

  • Letter |

    Relatively rapid changes in island area, isolation and connectivity observed since the Last Glacial Maximum have had measurable effects on present-day biodiversity, with formerly larger and less well connected islands having a greater number of endemic species.

    • Patrick Weigelt
    • , Manuel Jonas Steinbauer
    •  & Holger Kreft

  • Letter |

    Acclimation of leaf respiration to a 3–5-year period of warming by 3.4 °C for 10 North American tree species in forest conditions eliminated 80% of the increase in leaf respiration expected of non-acclimated trees; this suggests that the increase in respiration rates of terrestrial plants from climate warming, and the associated increase in atmospheric CO2 levels, may be less than anticipated.

    • Peter B. Reich
    • , Kerrie M. Sendall
    •  & Rebecca A. Montgomery

  • Letter |

    Using satellite data and a novel analytical approach, a new index of the sensitivity of vegetation to climate variability is developed, revealing areas of high sensitivity that include tundra, boreal forest, tropical forest and temperate grasslands.

    • Alistair W. R. Seddon
    • , Marc Macias-Fauria
    •  & Kathy J. Willis

  • Article |

    The authors found that the key elements of plant form and function, analysed at global scale, are largely concentrated into a two-dimensional plane indexed by the size of whole plants and organs on the one hand, and the construction costs for photosynthetic leaf area, on the other.

    • Sandra Díaz
    • , Jens Kattge
    •  & Lucas D. Gorné

  • Letter |

    It has been suggested that carbon starvation, owing to reduced availability of non-structural carbohydrates (NSCs), is an important contributor to tree mortality during drought in tropical rainforests; however, data from the world’s longest-running experimental drought study presented here show no evidence of carbon starvation, and instead the researchers conclude that impaired water hydraulic processes (involving the transport of water from soil to leaf) have a more important role in triggering tree death from long-term drought.

    • L. Rowland
    • , A. C. L. da Costa
    •  & P. Meir

  • Letter |

    Assessment of mangrove forest surface elevation changes across the Indo-Pacific coastal region finds that almost 70 per cent of the sites studied do not have enough sediment availability to offset predicted sea-level rise; modelling indicates that such sites could be submerged as early as 2070.

    • Catherine E. Lovelock
    • , Donald R. Cahoon
    •  & Tran Triet

  • Letter |

    Spring leaf unfolding has been occurring earlier in the year because of rising temperatures; however, long-term evidence in the field from 7 European tree species studied in 1,245 sites shows that this early unfolding effect is being reduced in recent years, possibly because the reducing chilling and/or insolation render trees less responsive to warming.

    • Yongshuo H. Fu
    • , Hongfang Zhao
    •  & Ivan A. Janssens

  • Letter |

    Species’ range dynamics depend not only on their ability to track climate, but also on the migration of their competitors, and the extent to which novel and current competitors exert differing competitive effects.

    • Jake M. Alexander
    • , Jeffrey M. Diez
    •  & Jonathan M. Levine

  • Letter |

    The capacity of Amazonian forests to sequester carbon has weakened with potentially important implications for climate change.

    • R. J. W. Brienen
    • , O. L. Phillips
    •  & R. J. Zagt

  • Letter |

    Severe drought in a tropical forest ecosystem suppresses photosynthetic carbon uptake and plant maintenance respiration, but growth is maintained, suggesting that, overall, less carbon is available for tree tissue maintenance and defence, which may cause the subsequent observed increase in tree mortality.

    • Christopher E. Doughty
    • , D. B. Metcalfe
    •  & Y. Malhi

  • Letter |

    An analysis of 21 coral reefs in the Indian Ocean using data across 17 years that spanned a major climatic disturbance reveals factors that predispose a coral reef to recovery or regime shift from hard corals to macroalgae; these results could foreshadow the likely outcomes of tropical coral reefs to the effects of climate change, informing management and adaptation plans.

    • Nicholas A. J. Graham
    • , Simon Jennings
    •  & Shaun K. Wilson

  • Letter |

    Microbial community responses in soils from the Arctic to the Amazon often enhance the longer-term temperature sensitivity of respiration, particularly in soils with high carbon-to-nitrogen ratios and in soils from cold regions, suggesting that carbon stored in Arctic and boreal soils could be more vulnerable to climate warming than currently predicted.

    • Kristiina Karhu
    • , Marc D. Auffret
    •  & Iain P. Hartley

  • Article |

    Net primary production is affected by temperature and precipitation, but whether this is a direct kinetic effect on plant metabolism or an indirect ecological effect mediated by changes in plant age, plant biomass or growing season length is unclear — this study develops metabolic scaling theory to be able to answer this question and applies it to a global data set of plant productivity, concluding that it is indirect effects that explain the influence of climate on productivity, which is characterized by a common scaling relationship across climate gradients.

    • Sean T. Michaletz
    • , Dongliang Cheng
    •  & Brian J. Enquist

  • Letter |

    A grassland warming and CO2 enrichment experiment shows that temperature increase brings forward the growing season of early leafing species, but does not affect or delays senescence in late species, the latter enhanced by elevated CO2.

    • Melissa Reyes-Fox
    • , Heidi Steltzer
    •  & Jack A. Morgan

  • Brief Communications Arising |

    • Trevor F. Keenan
    • , David Y. Hollinger
    •  & Andrew D. Richardson

  • Letter |

    Global maps constructed using climate-change velocities to derive spatial trajectories for climatic niches between 1960 and 2100 show past and future shifts in ecological climate niches; properties of these trajectories are used to infer changes in species distributions, and thus identify areas that will act as climate sources and sinks, and geographical barriers to species migrations.

    • Michael T. Burrows
    • , David S. Schoeman
    •  & Elvira S. Poloczanska

  • Letter |

    Until now, dimethylsulphoniopropionate (DMSP), an important component in the sulphur cycle, has been thought to be produced solely by algae and some plants; however, this study shows that the coral animal also produces DMSP, in addition to that produced by the coral’s algal symbiont, with potential implications for the sulphur cycle and its climatic consequences as corals and their symbionts are affected by global change.

    • Jean-Baptiste Raina
    • , Dianne M. Tapiolas
    •  & Cherie A. Motti

  • Letter |

    Two decades of summer warming in an Alaskan tundra ecosystem increased plant biomass and woody dominance, indirectly increased winter soil temperature, homogenized the soil trophic structure and suppressed surface-soil-decomposer activity, but did not change net soil carbon or nitrogen storage.

    • Seeta A. Sistla
    • , John C. Moore
    •  & Joshua P. Schimel

  • News & Views Forum |

    Predicting plant responses to increasing temperatures is integral to assessing the global impact of climate change. But the authors of a comparative study assert that warming experiments may not accurately reflect observational data. Climate and ecosystem scientists discuss how impact prediction should proceed. See Letter p.494

    • This Rutishauser
    • , Reto Stöckli
    •  & Lara Kueppers

  • Letter |

    Behavioural, neurogenetic and molecular studies of circadian 24-hour rhythms in fruitflies kept in semi-confinement outdoors challenge our established laboratory-based views of the relative importance of sources of rhythmic entrainment, including temperature, photoperiod and moonlight, as well as the role of some of the underlying clock genes in regulating circadian behaviour in the wild.

    • Stefano Vanin
    • , Supriya Bhutani
    •  & Charalambos P. Kyriacou

  • Editorial |

    The best way to manage national parks in the face of the effects of climate change is not to manage at the park level, but to work with landscapes. A new US initiative shows the way.

  • Books & Arts |

    A collection of essays highlights the pressing challenges of managing global waters, finds Clive Schofield.

    • Clive Schofield

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