Genetic diversity in caribou linked to past and future climate change

Climate-driven range fluctuations during the Pleistocene have continuously reshaped species distribution leading to populations of contrasting genetic diversity. Contemporary climate change is similarly influencing species distribution and population structure, with important consequences for patterns of genetic diversity and species' evolutionary potential1. Yet few studies assess the impacts of global climatic changes on intraspecific genetic variation2, 3, 4, 5. Here, combining analyses of molecular data with time series of predicted species distributions and a model of diffusion through time over the past 21 kyr, we unravel caribou response to past and future climate changes across its entire Holarctic distribution. We found that genetic diversity is geographically structured with two main caribou lineages, one originating from and confined to Northeastern America, the other originating from Euro-Beringia but also currently distributed in western North America. Regions that remained climatically stable over the past 21 kyr maintained a high genetic diversity and are also predicted to experience higher climatic stability under future climate change scenarios. Our interdisciplinary approach, combining genetic data and spatial analyses of climatic stability (applicable to virtually any taxon), represents a significant advance in inferring how climate shapes genetic diversity and impacts genetic structure.

Impacts of climate change on Swiss biodiversity: An indicator taxa approach

We present a new indicator taxa approach to the prediction of climate change effects on biodiversity at the national level in Switzerland. As indicators, we select a set of the most widely distributed species that account for 95% of geographical variation in sampled species richness of birds, butterflies, and vascular plants. Species data come from a national program designed to monitor spatial and temporal trends in species richness. We examine some opportunities and limitations in using these data. We develop ecological niche models for the species as functions of both climate and land cover variables. We project these models to the future using climate predictions that correspond to two IPCC 3rd assessment scenarios for the development of 'greenhouse' gas emissions. We find that models that are calibrated with Swiss national monitoring data perform well in 10-fold cross-validation, but can fail to capture the hot-dry end of environmental gradients that constrain some species distributions. Models for indicator species in all three higher taxa predict that climate change will result in turnover in species composition even where there is little net change in predicted species richness. Indicator species from high elevations lose most areas of suitable climate even under the relatively mild B2 scenario. We project some areas to increase in the number of species for which climate conditions are suitable early in the current century, but these areas become less suitable for a majority of species by the end of the century. Selection of indicator species based on rank prevalence results in a set of models that predict observed species richness better than a similar set of species selected based on high rank of model AUC values. An indicator species approach based on selected species that are relatively common may facilitate the use of national monitoring data for predicting climate change effects on the distribution of biodiversity.

Potential Impacts of Climate Change on Ecosystem Services in Europe: the Case of Pest Control by Vertebrates. BioScience.

Global environmental changes threaten ecosystems and cause significant alterations to the supply of ecosystem services that are vital for human well-being. We provide an assessment of the potential impacts of climate change on European diversity of vertebrates and their associated pest control services. We modeled the distributions of the species that provide this service using ensembles of forecasts from bioclimatic envelope models and then used their results to generate maps of potential species richness among vertebrate providers of pest control services. We assessed how potential richness of pest control providers would change according to different climate and greenhouse emissions scenarios. We found that potential richness of pest control providers was likely to face substantial reductions, especially in southern European countries that had economies highly dependent on agricultural yields. In much of central and northern Europe, where countries had their economies less dependent on agriculture, climate change was likely to benefit pest control providers

CO2-response function of radiation use efficiency in rice for climate change scenarios

The objective of this work was to evaluate a generalized response function to the atmospheric CO2 concentration [f(CO2)] by the radiation use efficiency (RUE) in rice. Experimental data on RUE at different CO2 concentrations were collected from rice trials performed in several locations around the world. RUE data were then normalized, so that all RUE at current CO2 concentration were equal to 1. The response function was obtained by fitting normalized RUE versus CO2 concentration to a Morgan-Mercer-Flodin (MMF) function, and by using Marquardt's method to estimate the model coefficients. Goodness of fit was measured by the standard deviation of the estimated coefficients, the coefficient of determination (R²), and the root mean square error (RMSE). The f(CO2) describes a nonlinear sigmoidal response of RUE in rice, in function of the atmospheric CO2 concentration, which has an ecophysiological background, and, therefore, renders a robust function that can be easily coupled to rice simulation models, besides covering the range of CO2 emissions for the next generation of climate scenarios for the 21st century.

The future of terrestrial mammals in the Mediterranean basin under climate change.

The Mediterranean basin is considered a hotspot of biological diversity with a long history of modification of natural ecosystems by human activities, and is one of the regions that will face extensive changes in climate. For 181 terrestrial mammals (68% of all Mediterranean mammals), we used an ensemble forecasting approach to model the future (approx. 2100) potential distribution under climate change considering five climate change model outputs for two climate scenarios. Overall, a substantial number of Mediterranean mammals will be severely threatened by future climate change, particularly endemic species. Moreover, we found important changes in potential species richness owing to climate change, with some areas (e.g. montane region in central Italy) gaining species, while most of the region will be losing species (mainly Spain and North Africa). Existing protected areas (PAs) will probably be strongly influenced by climate change, with most PAs in Africa, the Middle East and Spain losing a substantial number of species, and those PAs gaining species (e.g. central Italy and southern France) will experience a substantial shift in species composition.

Owl melanin-based plumage redness is more frequent near than away from the equator: implications on the effect of climate change on biodiversity

Climate change acts as a major new selective agent on many organisms, particularly at high latitudes where climate change is more pronounced than at lower latitudes. Studies are required to predict which species are at a high risk of extinction and whether certain phenotypes may be more affected by climate change than others. The identification of susceptible phenotypes is important for evaluating the potential negative effect of climate change on biodiversity at the inter- and intraspecific levels. Melanin-based coloration is an interesting and easily accessible candidate trait because, within certain species, reddish pheomelanin-based coloration is associated with adaptations to warm climates. However, it is unclear whether the same holds among species. We tested one prediction of this hypothesis in four owl genera (wood, scops, screech, and pygmy owls), namely that darker reddish species are more prevalent near the equator than polewards. Our comparative analysis is consistent with this prediction for the northern hemisphere, suggesting that pale reddish species may be adapted to cold climates and dark reddish species to warmer climates. Thus, climate change may have a larger negative impact on pale pheomelanic owls and favour dark pheomelanic species.

Continent wide response of mountain vegetation to climate change

Climate impact studies have indicated ecological fingerprints of recent global warming across a wide range of habitats. Whereas these studies have shown responses from various local case studies, a coherent large-scale account on temperature-driven changes of biotic communities has been lacking. Here we use 867 vegetation samples above the treeline from 60 summit sites in all major European mountain systems to show that ongoing climate change gradually transforms mountain plant communities. We provide evidence that the more cold-adapted species decline and the more warm-adapted species increase, a process described here as thermophilisation. At the scale of individual mountains this general trend may not be apparent, but at the¦larger, continental scale we observed a significantly higher abundance of thermophilic species in 2008, compared with 2001. Thermophilisation of mountain plant communities mirrors the degree of recent warming and is more pronounced in areas where the temperature increase has been higher. In view of the projected climate change the observed transformation suggests a progressive decline of cold mountain habitats and their biota.

Climate Change, Neutrality and the Harm Principle

This paper aims at evaluating the compatibility of coercive climate policies with liberal neutrality. More precisely, it focuses on the doctrine of state neutrality as associated with the "harm principle". It argues that given the difficulty of attributing causal responsibilities for climate harms to individuals, the harm principle doesn't work in this case, at least if one endorses a liberal atomistic ontology. Furthermore, the definition of what constitutes climate harms implies making moral assumptions, which makes it impossible to justify climate policies in a neutral way. Finally, the paper shows another consequence of applying neutrality to the case of climate change, that is the risk of a shift from political forms of decision-making to technocracy. Focusing too much on liberty of choice may (paradoxically) be to the detriment of political freedom. The paper concludes that climate change is an intrinsically moral issue and that it should be the occasion of a political debate about our current values and lifestyles. It should not be reduced to a mere question of carbon metric.

Genomic evidence for role of inversion 3RP of Drosophila melanogaster in facilitating climate change adaptation.

Chromosomal inversion polymorphisms are common in animals and plants, and recent models suggest that alternative arrangements spread by capturing different combinations of alleles acting additively or epistatically to favour local adaptation. It is also thought that inversions typically maintain favoured combinations for a long time by suppressing recombination between alternative chromosomal arrangements. Here, we consider patterns of linkage disequilibrium and genetic divergence in an old inversion polymorphism in Drosophila melanogaster (In(3R)Payne) known to be associated with climate change adaptation and a recent invasion event into Australia. We extracted, karyotyped and sequenced whole chromosomes from two Australian populations, so that changes in the arrangement of the alleles between geographically separated tropical and temperate areas could be compared. Chromosome-wide linkage disequilibrium (LD) analysis revealed strong LD within the region spanned by In(3R)Payne. This genomic region also showed strong differentiation between the tropical and the temperate populations, but no differentiation between different karyotypes from the same population, after controlling for chromosomal arrangement. Patterns of differentiation across the chromosome arm and in gene ontologies were enhanced by the presence of the inversion. These data support the notion that inversions are strongly selected by bringing together combinations of genes, but it is still not clear if such combinations act additively or epistatically. Our data suggest that climatic adaptation through inversions can be dynamic, reflecting changes in the relative abundance of different forms of an inversion and ongoing evolution of allelic content within an inversion.

Fire management, climate change and their interacting effects on birds in complex Mediterranean landscapes: dynamic distribution modelling of an early-successional species - the near-threatened Dartford Warbler (Sylvia undata)

The current challenge in a context of major environmental changes is to anticipate the responses of species to future landscape and climate scenarios. In the Mediterranean basin, climate change is one the most powerful driving forces of fire dynamics, with fire frequency and impact having markedly increased in recent years. Species distribution modelling plays a fundamental role in this challenge, but better integration of available ecological knowledge is needed to adequately guide conservation efforts. Here, we quantified changes in habitat suitability of an early-succession bird in Catalonia, the Dartford Warbler (Sylvia undata) ― globally evaluated as Near Threatened in the IUCN Red List. We assessed potential changes in species distributions between 2000 and 2050 under different fire management and climate change scenarios and described landscape dynamics using a spatially-explicit fire-succession model that simulates fire impacts in the landscape and post-fire regeneration (MEDFIRE model). Dartford Warbler occurrence data were acquired at two different spatial scales from: 1) the Atlas of European Breeding Birds (EBCC) and 2) Catalan Breeding Bird Atlas (CBBA). Habitat suitability was modelled using five widely-used modelling techniques in an ensemble forecasting framework. Our results indicated considerable habitat suitability losses (ranging between 47% and 57% in baseline scenarios), which were modulated to a large extent by fire regime changes derived from fire management policies and climate changes. Such result highlighted the need for taking the spatial interaction between climate changes, fire-mediated landscape dynamics and fire management policies into account for coherently anticipating habitat suitability changes of early succession bird species. We conclude that fire management programs need to be integrated into conservation plans to effectively preserve sparsely forested and early succession habitats and their associated species in the face of global environmental change.

Preface: Extreme events induced by weather and climate change: evaluation, forecasting and proactive planning

This special issue of Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences (NHESS) contains eight papers presented as oral or poster contributions in the Natural Hazards NH-1.2 session on"Extreme events induced by weather and climate change: evaluation, forecasting and proactive planning", held at the European Geosciences Union (EGU) General Assembly in Vienna, Austria, on 13-18 April 2008. The aim of the session was to provide an international forum for presenting new results and for discussing innovative ideas and concepts on extreme hydro-meteorological events, including: (i) the assessment of the risk posed by the extreme events, (ii) the expected changes in the frequency and intensity of the events driven by a changing climate and by multiple human- induced causes, (iii) new modelling approaches and original forecasting methods to predict extreme events and their consequences, and (iv) strategies for hazard mitigation and risk reduction, and for a improved adaptation to extreme hydro-meteorological events ...

New Climate Change Related EC Directives and Their Interrelations to Green Electricity and Certificate Practices

Työn päätavoite on tutkia vihreän sähkön ja sertifikaattien kaupan ja EY:n uusien ilmastonmuutosta koskevien direktiivien ja direktiiviehdotusten välisiä yhteyksiä. Tutkimuksessa käsitellään direktiiviä sähköntuotannosta uusiutuvilla energialähteillä ja direktiiviehdotuksia Euroopan Unionin alueen päästökaupasta sekä yhdistetyn sähkön ja lämmön tuotannon lisäämisestä. Työ keskittyy erään suomalaisen metsäteollisuusyrityksen toimiin ilmastonmuutoksen hidastamiseksi. Tutkimus keskittyy pääosin EU:n suunnitelmaan aloittaa Unionin jäsenvaltioiden välinen päästökauppa, koska tämä järjestelmä tulee toteutuessaan olemaan teollisuuden kannalta merkittävä. Tilannetta on analysoitu neljän sellu- ja paperitehtaan hiilidioksidipäästölaskelmien avulla. Työssä kehitettyjä laskumalleja voidaan käyttää avuksi yhtiön muilla tehtailla. Tämän lisäksi työssä on luotu malli energiainvestointien arvioimiseksi tulevaisuudessa ottamalla päästöoikeuden hinnan vaikutus huomioon. Päästökaupan vaikutukset pohjoismaisilla vapautuneilla sähkömarkkinoilla on analysoity, koska teollinen sähkönhankinta on suuresti riippuvainen tästä markkinasta. Suomen metsäteollisuuden oma yhdistetty sähkön ja lämmön tuotanto erityisesti uusiutuvista energialähteistä tulee olemaan entistäkin tärkeämpää tiukentuvassa toimintaympäristössä. Tällä hetkellä on käynnissä kokeilu lisäarvon saamiseksi omalle sähköntuotannolle. Tällä haetaan kokemuksia ja valmiutta tulevaa päästökauppaa varten.

Phylogeny and biogeography of Primula sect. Armerina: implications for plant evolution under climate change and the uplift of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.

BACKGROUND: The historical orogenesis and associated climatic changes of mountain areas have been suggested to partly account for the occurrence of high levels of biodiversity and endemism. However, their effects on dispersal, differentiation and evolution of many groups of plants are still unknown. In this study, we examined the detailed diversification history of Primula sect. Armerina, and used biogeographic analysis and macro-evolutionary modeling to investigate a series of different questions concerning the evolution of the geographical and ecological distribution of the species in this section. RESULTS: We sequenced five chloroplast and one nuclear genes for species of Primula sect. Armerina. Neither chloroplast nor nuclear trees support the monophyly of the section. The major incongruences between the two trees occur among closely related species and may be explained by hybridization. Our dating analyses based on the chloroplast dataset suggest that this section began to diverge from its relatives around 3.55 million years ago, largely coinciding with the last major uplift of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (QTP). Biogeographic analysis supports the origin of the section in the Himalayan Mountains and dispersal from the Himalayas to Northeastern QTP, Western QTP and Hengduan Mountains. Furthermore, evolutionary models of ecological niches show that the two P. fasciculata clades have significantly different climatic niche optima and rates of niche evolution, indicating niche evolution under climatic changes and further providing evidence for explaining their biogeographic patterns. CONCLUSION: Our results support the hypothesis that geologic and climatic events play important roles in driving biological diversification of organisms in the QTP area. The Pliocene uplift of the QTP and following climatic changes most likely promoted both the inter- and intraspecific divergence of Primula sect. Armerina. This study also illustrates how niche evolution under climatic changes influences biogeographic patterns.