The effects of phenotypic plasticity and local adaptation on forecasts of species range shifts under climate change.

By F. Valladares, S. Matesanz, F. Guilhaumon, Miguel B. Araújo, L. Balaguer, M. Benito-Garzón, William K. Cornwell, Ernesto Gianoli, M. van Kleunen, D. Naya and 3 more. Ecology Letters, 2014

1,014 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Species are the unit of analysis in many global change and conservation biology studies; however, species are not uniform entities but are composed of different, sometimes locally adapted, populations differing in plasticity. We examined how intraspecific variation in thermal niches and phenotypic plasticity will affect species distributions in a warming climate. We first developed a conceptual model linking plasticity and niche breadth, providing five alternative intraspecific scenarios that are consistent with existing literature. Secondly, we used ecological niche-modeling techniques to quantify the impact of each intraspecific scenario on the distribution of a virtual species across a geographically realistic setting. Finally, we performed an analogous modeling exercise using real data on the climatic niches of different tree provenances. We show that when population differentiation is accounted for and dispersal is restricted, forecasts of species range shifts under climate change are even more pessimistic than those using the conventional assumption of homogeneously high plasticity across a species' range. Suitable population-level data are not available for most species so identifying general patterns of population differentiation could fill this gap. However, the literature review revealed contrasting patterns among species, urging greater levels of integration among empirical, modeling and theoretical research on intraspecific phenotypic variation.

Subfields: Ecological Modeling, Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics, Nature and Landscape Conservation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/d88c7d8c035f73147f29f69073451b21b2acec92

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Citations in the corpus

Range shifts in response to past and future climate change: Can climate velocities and species’ dispersal capabilities explain variation in mammalian range shifts? (2018, background): “…such as phenotypic or behavioural plasticity or adaptation (R eale, McAdam, Boutin, & Berteaux, 2003), which, together with the influence of local species interactions, may influence the overall correlation between climate and range shifts (e.g., Valladares et al., 2014; Wisz et al., 2013).”
Resist, recover or both? Growth plasticity in response to drought is geographically structured and linked to intraspecific variability in Pinus pinaster (2018, background): “radial-growth plasticity) and to assess how genetic variation and, consequently, phenotypic plasticity allow tree populations to cope with climate extremes (Valladares et al., 2014).”
Invasive weed species’ threats to global biodiversity: Future scenarios of changes in the number of invasive species in a changing climate (2020, background): “Additional potential climate-related changes to the distribution of a species can include the phenological acclimatization and adaptation, as well as the potential in specific instances for extinction (Aitken et al., 2008; Lamsal et al., 2017; Shabani et al., 2017; Valladares et al., 2014).”
Connectivity for species on the move: supporting climate‐driven range shifts (2019, background): “Improving our understanding of highly variable range boundary dynamics and patterns of both phenotypic plasticity and adaptive capacity across species’ ranges (Valladares et al. 2014) may lead to the development of additional connectivity strategies.”
Stay or go – how topographic complexity influences alpine plant population and community responses to climate change (2017, background): “…can remain within the landscape if they tolerate the new climatic conditions, either through intrinsic ability of individuals to tolerate changing climatic conditions (Bertrand et al., 2016), or through intraspecific variation in the position of the climatic niche optima (Valladares et al., 2014).”