Climate effects? It depends on habitat

Climate effects? It depends on habitat

Climate response positive (red) or negative (blue) depends on habitat. Climate–habitat interactions at a NEON site near Vancouver, WA with LIDAR canopy height for 30 m plots. Symbol color is abundance change (increasing red, decreasing blue) for Pterostichus pensylvanicus from the historical baseline under climate change to 2100.

As one of the most diverse and economically important families on Earth, ground beetles are a key barometer of climate change. The effects of climate change must depend on species traits like body size, diet, and flight, and their differences in habitat requirements, but we do not yet know how. Our analysis shows that ground beetle community reorganization is governed by climate–habitat interactions (CHI), and much of the response can be explained by trait syndromes. The fact that habitat mediates warming impacts has immediate application to critical habitat designation for conservation.

The broad diversity of ground-beetle traits control their responses to climate change. Included here are runners (a, b, c, g), burrowers (f), flyers (a, b, d, e), predators (a, b, c, f, g), and herbivores (d, e).

Qiu, T., Bell, A. J., Swenson, J. J., & Clark, J. S. (2023). Habitat–trait interactions that control response to climate change: North American ground beetles (Carabidae). Global Ecology and Biogeography, 00, 1– 15. https://doi.org/10.1111/geb.13670

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