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Open AccessJournal ArticleDOI

Extinction risk from climate change

TLDR
Estimates of extinction risks for sample regions that cover some 20% of the Earth's terrestrial surface show the importance of rapid implementation of technologies to decrease greenhouse gas emissions and strategies for carbon sequestration.
Abstract
Climate change over the past approximately 30 years has produced numerous shifts in the distributions and abundances of species and has been implicated in one species-level extinction. Using projections of species' distributions for future climate scenarios, we assess extinction risks for sample regions that cover some 20% of the Earth's terrestrial surface. Exploring three approaches in which the estimated probability of extinction shows a power-law relationship with geographical range size, we predict, on the basis of mid-range climate-warming scenarios for 2050, that 15-37% of species in our sample of regions and taxa will be 'committed to extinction'. When the average of the three methods and two dispersal scenarios is taken, minimal climate-warming scenarios produce lower projections of species committed to extinction ( approximately 18%) than mid-range ( approximately 24%) and maximum-change ( approximately 35%) scenarios. These estimates show the importance of rapid implementation of technologies to decrease greenhouse gas emissions and strategies for carbon sequestration.

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The recent past and promising future for data integration methods to estimate species’ distributions

TL;DR: This work outlines the general principles that have guided data integration methods and review recent developments and outlines key areas that allow for a more general framework for integrating data and provides suggestions for improving sampling design and validation for integrated models.
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African plant diversity and climate change

TL;DR: The models suggest that efforts to protect African plant diversity should take future climate-forced distribution changes into account, and indicate dramatic change in the Guineo-Congolian forests, mirroring proposed ecological dynamics in the past.
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A global assessment of current and future biodiversity vulnerability to habitat loss–climate change interactions

TL;DR: In this article, the authors present the first global assessment of current and potential future impacts on biodiversity of a habitat loss and fragmentation-climate change (HLF-CC) interaction, finding that recent climate change is likely (probability > 66%) to have exacerbated the impacts of HLF in 120 (18.5%) ecoregions, containing over half of all known terrestrial amphibian, bird, mammal, and reptile species.
Journal ArticleDOI

Phyloclimatic modeling: combining phylogenetics and bioclimatic modeling.

TL;DR: This is the first study to attempt bioclimatic projections on evolutionary time scales and demonstrates that Phyloclimatics modeling could be repeated for other plant groups and is fundamental to the understanding of evolutionary responses to climate change.
Journal ArticleDOI

The composition of phyllosphere fungal assemblages of European beech (Fagus sylvatica) varies significantly along an elevation gradient

TL;DR: Investigating variations in the composition of fungal assemblages inhabiting the phyllosphere of European beech at four sites over a gradient of 1000 m of elevation in the French Pyrénées Mountains suggests that climate warming might alter both the incidence and the abundance of phyllospheric fungal species, including potential pathogens.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI

Biodiversity hotspots for conservation priorities

TL;DR: A ‘silver bullet’ strategy on the part of conservation planners, focusing on ‘biodiversity hotspots’ where exceptional concentrations of endemic species are undergoing exceptional loss of habitat, is proposed.
Journal ArticleDOI

Climate change 2001: the scientific basis

TL;DR: In this article, the authors present an overview of the climate system and its dynamics, including observed climate variability and change, the carbon cycle, atmospheric chemistry and greenhouse gases, and their direct and indirect effects.
Journal ArticleDOI

A globally coherent fingerprint of climate change impacts across natural systems

TL;DR: A diagnostic fingerprint of temporal and spatial ‘sign-switching’ responses uniquely predicted by twentieth century climate trends is defined and generates ‘very high confidence’ (as laid down by the IPCC) that climate change is already affecting living systems.
Book

Species Diversity in Space and Time

TL;DR: In this article, the authors present a hierarchical dynamic puzzle to understand the relationship between habitat diversity and species diversity and the evolution of the relationships between habitats diversity and diversity in evolutionary time.
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