Improving the community-temperature index as a climate change indicator.

ABSTRACT: Climate change indicators are tools to assess, visualize and communicate the impacts of climate change on species and communities. Indicators that can be applied to different taxa are particularly useful because they allow comparative analysis to identify which kinds of species are being more affected. A general prediction, supported by empirical data, is that the abundance of warm-adapted species should increase over time, relative to the cool-adapted ones within communities, under increasing ambient temperatures. The community temperature index (CTI) is a community weighted mean of species' temperature preferences and has been used as an indicator to summarize this temporal shift. The CTI has the advantages of being a simple and generalizable indicator; however, a core problem is that te

SUBMITTER: Bowler D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5595310 | biostudies-literature | 2017

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature