Climate-change ecology articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    Drought conditions can alter the composition of soil microbial communities, but the effects of drought on network properties have not been tested. Here, de Vries and colleagues show that co-occurrence networks are destabilised under drought for bacteria but not fungi.

    • Franciska T. de Vries
    • , Rob I. Griffiths
    •  & Richard D. Bardgett

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A substantial portion of model uncertainty arises from model parameters and structures. Here, the authors show that alternative model structures with data-driven parameters project greater uncertainty in soil carbon responses to climate change than the conventional soil carbon model.

    • Zheng Shi
    • , Sean Crowell
    •  & Berrien Moore III

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Coral bleaching is often predicted via remote sensing of ocean temperatures at large scales, obscuring important reef-scale drivers and biological responses. Here, the authors use in- situ data to show that bleaching is lower globally at reef habitats with greater diurnal temperature variability.

    • Aryan Safaie
    • , Nyssa J. Silbiger
    •  & Kristen A. Davis

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Invasive alien pests can cause large-scale forest mortality and release carbon stored in forests. Here the authors show that climate change increases the potential range of alien pests and that their impact on the carbon cycle could be as severe as the current natural disturbance regime in Europe’s forests.

    • Rupert Seidl
    • , Günther Klonner
    •  & Stefan Dullinger

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Habitat change and warming each contribute to species' elevational range shifts, but their synergistic effects have not been explored. Here, Guo et al. reanalyze published data and show that the interaction between warming and forest change predicts range shifts better than either factor on its own.

    • Fengyi Guo
    • , Jonathan Lenoir
    •  & Timothy C. Bonebrake

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Arctic ecosystems are at threat due to the rapid nature of climate change and Arctic amplification. Here, the authors show that the watershed of Lake Hazen, the Arctic’s largest lake by volume, has undergone dramatic changes in response to as little as a ~1°C increase in summer air temperatures.

    • Igor Lehnherr
    • , Vincent L. St. Louis
    •  & Charles H. Talbot

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Phenotypic plasticity—the ability to express multiple phenotypes from the same genome—is a widespread adaptation to environmental variability. Here, Oostra et al analyze transcriptomes of an African butterfly with distinct seasonal phenotypes, and observe lack of variation for plasticity, limiting potential for evolutionary responses to climate change.

    • Vicencio Oostra
    • , Marjo Saastamoinen
    •  & Christopher W. Wheat

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Plant growing season increases under a warming climate, but it is not known whether this will alter plant exposure to frost days. Here Liu et al. investigate trends in the Northern Hemisphere over 30 years and find increased exposure to frost days in regions that have longer growing seasons.

    • Qiang Liu
    • , Shilong Piao
    •  & Tao Wang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Sea butterflies, or pteropods, are often presented as being at threat from ocean acidification on account of their fragile shells being susceptible to dissolution. Here the authors show that pteropods are able to perform extensive repair to damaged shells, suggesting they may not be as vulnerable as previously thought.

    • Victoria L. Peck
    • , Rosie L. Oakes
    •  & Geraint A. Tarling

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Recently, an eDNA metabarcoding data set was used to describe northern high-latitude vegetation during the past 50,000 years. Here, Zobel et al. use the data set to examine how the abundance of key plant mutualistic traits changed during this period and discuss possible environmental drivers.

    • Martin Zobel
    • , John Davison
    •  & Mari Moora

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Climate oscillations affect weather on different temporal-spatial scales, which poses difficulty in understanding how they influence tree reproduction. Here Ascoli et al. show relationships between low- and high-frequency components of the NAO and masting in two European tree species across multiple decades.

    • Davide Ascoli
    • , Giorgio Vacchiano
    •  & Andrew Hacket-Pain

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The existence of a pan-tropical forest carbon sink remains uncertain due to the lack of data from Asia. Here, using direct on-the-ground observations, the authors confirm remaining intact forests in Borneo have provided a long-term carbon sink, but carbon net gains are vulnerable to drought and edge effects.

    • Lan Qie
    • , Simon L. Lewis
    •  & Oliver L. Phillips

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The impacts of top down (precipitation) and bottom-up (groundwater rise) wetting processes on carbon sequestration are poorly understood. Here, the authors use incubation experiments to show that drought legacy and pore-scale wetting patterns are important factors controlling short-term carbon dynamics.

    • A. Peyton Smith
    • , Ben Bond-Lamberty
    •  & Vanessa L. Bailey

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Peatland plant communities are expected to be affected by environmental change, though how assemblages respond is not fully understood. Here, Robroek et al. show that peatland species occur in two distinct clusters, and functional identity and redundancy was maintained under taxonomic turnover.

    • Bjorn J. M. Robroek
    • , Vincent E. J. Jassey
    •  & Jos T. A. Verhoeven

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Adélie penguins are a key Antarctic indicator species, but data patchiness has challenged efforts to link population dynamics to key drivers. Che-Castaldo et al. resolve this issue using a pan-Antarctic Bayesian model to infer missing data, and show that spatial aggregation leads to more robust inference regarding dynamics.

    • Christian Che-Castaldo
    • , Stephanie Jenouvrier
    •  & Heather J. Lynch

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Elevated temperatures can cause anemones to bleach, with unknown effects on their associated symbiotic fish. Here, Beldade and colleagues show that climate-induced bleaching alters anemonefish hormonal stress response, resulting in decreased reproductive hormones and severely impacted reproduction.

    • Ricardo Beldade
    • , Agathe Blandin
    •  & Suzanne C. Mills

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Warming can reduce plant diversity but it is unclear which species will be lost or gained under interacting global changes. Kaarlejärvi et al. manipulate temperature, herbivory and nutrients in a tundra system and find that herbivory maintains diversity under warming by reducing species losses and promoting gains.

    • Elina Kaarlejärvi
    • , Anu Eskelinen
    •  & Johan Olofsson

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Reliable estimates of the total forest carbon (C) pool are lacking due to insufficient information on dead organic matter (DOM). Here, the authors estimate that the current DOM C stock in China is 925 ± 54 Tg and that it grew by 6.7 ± 2.2 Tg C/yr over the past two decades primarily due to increasing forest area

    • Jianxiao Zhu
    • , Huifeng Hu
    •  & Jingyun Fang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Environmental niche models are often used to predict species responses to climate change but they neglect the potential for evolutionary responses. Here, Cottoet al. develop a model incorporating demographic processes and evolutionary dynamics and show that perennial alpine plants persist in unsuitable habitats but produce maladapted offspring.

    • Olivier Cotto
    • , Johannes Wessely
    •  & Frédéric Guillaume

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Relatively little is understood about seasonal effect of climate change on the Amazon rainforest. Here, the authors show that Amazon forest loss in response to dry-season intensification during the last glacial period was likely self-amplified by regional vegetation-rainfall feedbacks.

    • Delphine Clara Zemp
    • , Carl-Friedrich Schleussner
    •  & Anja Rammig

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Marine plankton are the basis of the oceanic food chain. Here, Chivers and colleagues use ocean-basin wide plankton population data over six decades to show huge differences in the response of different plankton groups to climate change with major implications for the marine ecosystem and fisheries.

    • William J. Chivers
    • , Anthony W. Walne
    •  & Graeme C. Hays

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Future stress on water resources, and on temperate drylands in particular, remains uncertain. Here, the authors show that climate in the late twenty first century may reduce the extent of temperate drylands, dry deep soils, and create intra-regional and intercontinental differences in ecological drought.

    • Daniel R. Schlaepfer
    • , John B. Bradford
    •  & Khishigbayar Jamiyansharav

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Megafaunal extinction in Australia has been attributed to both climate change and human causation. Here, van der Kaarset al. present a 150,000 year record offshore southwest Australia in which they refine the timing and nature of regional ecosystem changes and megafaunal population collapse.

    • Sander van der Kaars
    • , Gifford H. Miller
    •  & Scott J. Lehman

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Global warming is expected to lead to shifts in species' geographic ranges to track preferred temperatures. Here, the authors show that populations of the common periwinkle vary in their sensitivity to ocean acidification, another major global change driver, which could further restrict range shifts caused by warming.

    • Piero Calosi
    • , Sedercor Melatunan
    •  & Simon D. Rundle

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In addition to affecting individual species, climate change can modify species interactions. Coupling simulation models with networks between plants and animal pollinators and seed dispersers, Schleuninget al. show that animal persistence under climate change depends more strongly on plant persistence than vice versa.

    • Matthias Schleuning
    • , Jochen Fründ
    •  & Christian Hof

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Increased temperature and nutrient pollution are key features of anthropogenic change, but their dual effects on biodiversity remain unclear. Here Wanget al. conduct field experiments at two mountain elevation gradients to show that temperature and nutrients have independent and interactive effects on microbial diversity.

    • Jianjun Wang
    • , Feiyan Pan
    •  & Ji Shen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Giant kelp is sometimes considered the ‘canary in the coal mine’ of coastal ecosystems. However, Reedet al. demonstrate that kelp did not decline during recent ocean warming in California, questioning whether this species is an appropriate indicator for ecosystem responses to future climate change.

    • Daniel Reed
    • , Libe Washburn
    •  & Shannon Harrer

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Year-to-year variability in atmospheric CO2 is strongly influenced by the terrestrial biosphere. Despite increasing anthropogenic emissions, Keenan et al. report a recent pause in the growth rate of atmospheric CO2using observations and vegetation models, attributed to an enhanced terrestrial carbon sink.

    • Trevor F Keenan
    • , I. Colin Prentice
    •  & G. James Collatz

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Many species show a time-lagged response to climate change, a phenomenon called climatic debt. Here, Bertrand and colleagues show that climate severity and plant tolerance to climate warming mainly influence the climatic debt of forest herbaceous plant communities.

    • Romain Bertrand
    • , Gabriela Riofrío-Dillon
    •  & Michel Loreau

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Intensifying drought has caused massive die-offs in ecosystems worldwide. Here, Angelini et al.use observations, experiments, and models in US salt marshes to show that a key mutualism increases ecosystem resilience by maintaining stress-resistant habitat patches that aid post-drought recovery.

    • Christine Angelini
    • , John N. Griffin
    •  & Brian R. Silliman

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Climate change velocity describes organism exposure to a modified climate, but as a distance-based metric, fails to consider that trajectories traverse dissimilar environments. Here, the authors calculate minimum cumulative exposure, finding that mountainous regions are particularly vulnerable.

    • Solomon Z. Dobrowski
    •  & Sean A. Parks

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Climate warming has a wide range of effects on biodiversity. Here, Zhou et al. show that although variation in environmental temperature is a primary driver of soil microbial biodiversity, microbes show much lower rates of turnover across temperature gradients than other major taxa.

    • Jizhong Zhou
    • , Ye Deng
    •  & James H. Brown

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Species diversity is thought to play an important role in maintaining production stability. Shi et al.demonstrate that the dominant C4 plant also makes a substantial contribution to temporal stability in a grassland ecosystem subject to 15 years of experimental warming and hay harvest.

    • Zheng Shi
    • , Xia Xu
    •  & Yiqi Luo

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Understanding climatic adaptation in fish is limited by a lack of large-scale, long term acclimation studies. Here, Sandblom et al. show that fish exposed to a 5-10 °C increase in water temperature next to a nuclear power plant display contrasting upper and lower cardiorespiratory thermal compensation limits.

    • Erik Sandblom
    • , Timothy D. Clark
    •  & Fredrik Jutfelt

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The adaptive capabilities of planktonic communities to climate change remain uncertain. Here, using Lagrangian particle tracking and network theory, the authors show that surface ocean currents can navigate the globe within 10 years, suggesting that marine plankton may keep pace with climate change.

    • Bror F. Jönsson
    •  & James R. Watson

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Knowing which species traits may confer resilience to human-mediated stressors will help predict future impacts on biodiversity. Here, Mellin et al. show that large bodied fish with small geographic ranges are disproportionately affected by the negative impacts of human disturbance and climate variability.

    • C. Mellin
    • , D. Mouillot
    •  & M. J. Caley

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Low latitude populations are often thought to be more vulnerable to climate change due to warmer ambient conditions. Here, Bennett et al.show that populations of seaweed from different areas of their range have distinct thermal-tolerance thresholds, but share remarkably similar thermal safety margins to warming.

    • Scott Bennett
    • , Thomas Wernberg
    •  & Alexandra H. Campbell

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Understanding how organisms respond to short-term climate variations will help predict the impact of future global change. Here, Bost et al. show that large-scale climatic anomalies coincide with changes in the foraging behaviour and populations dynamics of king penguins in the Southern hemisphere.

    • Charles A. Bost
    • , Cedric Cotté
    •  & Henri Weimerskirch

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Crocodylians and their relatives have a rich evolutionary history. Here the authors show long-term decline of terrestrial crocodylians driven by decreasing temperatures but no relationship between temperature and biodiversity for marine crocodylians over their 250 million year history.

    • Philip D. Mannion
    • , Roger B. J. Benson
    •  & Richard J. Butler

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Climatic change is predicted to impact moisture-dependent ecosystems. Here Carroll et al. show that a combination of physical, biophysical and ecosystem processes determine the abundance and distribution of three bird species that feed on craneflies in blanket bogs.

    • Matthew J. Carroll
    • , Andreas Heinemeyer
    •  & Chris D. Thomas

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Reductions in winter duration under climate change may have negative consequences for ectotherms adapted to seasonal temperature regimes. Here Farmeret al. show how short winters have, in part, caused failed lake fishery recruitment by altering spawning phenology and lowering the quality of eggs and larvae.

    • Troy M. Farmer
    • , Elizabeth A. Marschall
    •  & Stuart A. Ludsin

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