Climate-Related Local Extinctions Are Already Widespread among Plant and Animal Species

Name:
journal.pbio.2001104.pdf
Size:
1.201Mb
Format:
PDF
Description:
Final Published Version
Download
Author
Wiens, John J.
Affiliation
Univ Arizona, Dept Ecol & Evolutionary Biol
Issue Date
2016-12-08

Metadata
Show full item record
Publisher
PUBLIC LIBRARY SCIENCE
Citation
Climate-Related Local Extinctions Are Already Widespread among Plant and Animal Species 2016, 14 (12):e2001104 PLOS Biology
Journal
PLOS Biology
Rights
© 2016 John J. Wiens. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.
Collection Information
This item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at repository@u.library.arizona.edu.
Abstract
Current climate change may be a major threat to global biodiversity, but the extent of species loss will depend on the details of how species respond to changing climates. For example, if most species can undergo rapid change in their climatic niches, then extinctions may be limited. Numerous studies have now documented shifts in the geographic ranges of species that were inferred to be related to climate change, especially shifts towards higher mean elevations and latitudes. Many of these studies contain valuable data on extinctions of local populations that have not yet been thoroughly explored. Specifically, overall range shifts can include range contractions at the "warm edges" of species' ranges (i.e., lower latitudes and elevations), contractions which occur through local extinctions. Here, data on climate-related range shifts were used to test the frequency of local extinctions related to recent climate change. The results show that climate-related local extinctions have already occurred in hundreds of species, including 47% of the 976 species surveyed. This frequency of local extinctions was broadly similar across climatic zones, clades, and habitats but was significantly higher in tropical species than in temperate species (55% versus 39%), in animals than in plants (50% versus 39%), and in freshwater habitats relative to terrestrial and marine habitats (74% versus 46% versus 51%). Overall, these results suggest that local extinctions related to climate change are already widespread, even though levels of climate change so far are modest relative to those predicted in the next 100 years. These extinctions will presumably become much more prevalent as global warming increases further by roughly 2-fold to 5-fold over the coming decades.
Note
Open access journal.
ISSN
1545-7885
PubMed ID
27930674
DOI
10.1371/journal.pbio.2001104
Version
Final published version
Additional Links
http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.2001104
Collections
Except where otherwise noted, this item's license is described as © 2016 John J. Wiens. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.