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Species’ traits influenced their response to recent climate change

An Author Correction to this article was published on 16 July 2018

Abstract

Although it is widely accepted that future climatic change—if unabated—is likely to have major impacts on biodiversity1,2, few studies have attempted to quantify the number of species whose populations have already been impacted by climate change3,4. Using a systematic review of published literature, we identified mammals and birds for which there is evidence that they have already been impacted by climate change. We modelled the relationships between observed responses and intrinsic (for example, body mass) and spatial traits (for example, temperature seasonality within the geographic range). Using this model, we estimated that 47% of terrestrial non-volant threatened mammals (out of 873 species) and 23.4% of threatened birds (out of 1,272 species) may have already been negatively impacted by climate change in at least part of their distribution. Our results suggest that populations of large numbers of threatened species are likely to be already affected by climate change, and that conservation managers, planners and policy makers must take this into account in efforts to safeguard the future of biodiversity.

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Figure 1: Observed and predicted response of mammals and birds to climate change.
Figure 2: Map of the study sites.

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Acknowledgements

We thank L. Santini for stimulating discussions on phylogenetic models.

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Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Contributions

M.P., P.V., C.R. and J.E.M.W. designed the framework for the meta-analysis. M.P. conducted the analyses and collected the data for mammals. P.V. contributed to the analyses. S.H.M.B. provided data and examined the results for birds. F.M.C. collected data for birds. All authors contributed to the writing, discussed the results and commented on the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Michela Pacifici.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Pacifici, M., Visconti, P., Butchart, S. et al. Species’ traits influenced their response to recent climate change. Nature Clim Change 7, 205–208 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate3223

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