Habitat availability explains variation in climate-driven range shifts across multiple taxonomic groups.

ABSTRACT: Range shifting is vital for species persistence, but there is little consensus on why individual species vary so greatly in the rates at which their ranges have shifted in response to recent climate warming. Here, using 40 years of distribution data for 291 species from 13 invertebrate taxa in Britain, we show that interactions between habitat availability and exposure to climate change at the range margins explain up to half of the variation in rates of range shift. Habitat generalists expanded faster than more specialised species, but this intrinsic trait explains less of the variation in range shifts than habitat availability, which additionally depends on extrinsic factors that may be rare or widespread at the range margin. Similarly, while climate change likely underlies polewards exp

SUBMITTER: Platts PJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6803766 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature