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CLIMATE CHANGE ECOLOGY

Decoupled land–sea biodiversity trends

Nature Ecology & Evolution volume 4, pages 901–902 (2020)Cite this article

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A global analysis of biodiversity time series across temperate zones shows contrasting fingerprints of contemporary climate warming on species assemblages over land and sea. A net increase in the number of species is evident in the warmest temperate oceans but no systematic biodiversity trend is detected in the terrestrial realm.

As climate change unfolds, rapid changes in population dynamics and species distributions have been documented from polar to tropical regions1,2. These changes are thought to result from the sensitivity of organisms to climate exposure and from intrinsic characteristics associated with the capacity to adapt to these changes in the environment3. It takes substantial efforts to understand the redistribution of a single species, so anticipating climate-induced effects on species assemblages is a challenging task. A key question is how predictable is the climate-induced redistribution of biodiversity on Earth. Writing in Nature Ecology & Evolution, Antão and collaborators4 provide a detailed analysis of the extent of climate effects on biodiversity in both marine and terrestrial species assemblages, using the largest database of biodiversity time series available to date, which spans plant, invertebrate and vertebrate groups (bioTIME5).

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Fig. 1: Climate-induced effects on species assemblages differ between marine and terrestrial realms.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

    Lise Comte

  2. UR “Ecologie et Dynamique des Systèmes Anthropisés” (EDYSAN), UMR7058 CNRS, Université de Picardie Jules Verne, Amiens, France

    Jonathan Lenoir

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  1. Lise Comte
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  2. Jonathan Lenoir
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Correspondence to Lise Comte.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Comte, L., Lenoir, J. Decoupled land–sea biodiversity trends. Nat Ecol Evol 4, 901–902 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-020-1191-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-020-1191-9

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