A species' response to spatial climatic variation does not predict its response to climate change

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Perret, Daniel L.; Evans, Margaret E. K.; Sax, Dov F.
• 署名单位: Brown University; University of Arizona; Brown University; United States Department of Agriculture (USDA); United States Forest Service; Oak Ridge Associated Universities; United States Department of Energy (DOE); Oak Ridge Institute for Science & Education
• 刊物名称: PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0027-12413
• DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2304404120
• 发表日期: 2024-01-02
• 关键词: extinction risk; conservation biogeography; distribution models; site index; range; evolutionary; biodiversity; FUTURE; disequilibrium; distributions

摘要

The dominant paradigm for assessing ecological responses to climate change assumes that future states of individuals and populations can be predicted by current, species -wide performance variation across spatial climatic gradients. However, if the fates of ecological systems are better predicted by past responses to in situ climatic variation through time, this current analytical paradigm may be severely misleading. Empirically testing whether spatial or temporal climate responses better predict how species respond to climate change has been elusive, largely due to restrictive data requirements. Here, we leverage a newly collected network of ponderosa pine tree -ring time series to test whether statistically inferred responses to spatial versus temporal climatic variation better predict how trees have responded to recent climate change. When compared to observed tree growth responses to climate change since 1980, predictions derived from spatial climatic variation were wrong in both magnitude and direction. This was not the case for predictions derived from climatic variation through time, which were able to replicate observed responses well. Future climate scenarios through the end of the 21st century exacerbated these disparities. These results suggest that the currently dominant paradigm of forecasting the ecological impacts of climate change based on spatial climatic variation may be severely misleading over decadal to centennial timescales.SignificanceMost predictions of how species will respond to climate change assume that performance variation across spatial climatic gradients predicts how individuals and populations will respond to climate change through time. Here, we use a new network of tree -ring growth time series collected from across the distribution of ponderosa pine to demonstrate that this assumption is false and produces severely misleading predictions.