Mesocosms Reveal Ecological Surprises from Climate Change
Understanding, predicting, and mitigating the impacts of climate change on biodiversity poses one of the most crucial challenges this century. Currently, we know more about how future climates are likely to shift across the globe than about how species will respond to these changes. Two recent studi...
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| Format: | Online |
| Language: | English |
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Public Library of Science
2015
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| Online Access: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4682990/ |
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pubmed-46829902015-12-31 Mesocosms Reveal Ecological Surprises from Climate Change Fordham, Damien A. Primer Understanding, predicting, and mitigating the impacts of climate change on biodiversity poses one of the most crucial challenges this century. Currently, we know more about how future climates are likely to shift across the globe than about how species will respond to these changes. Two recent studies show how mesocosm experiments can hasten understanding of the ecological consequences of climate change on species’ extinction risk, community structure, and ecosystem functions. Using a large-scale terrestrial warming experiment, Bestion et al. provide the first direct evidence that future global warming can increase extinction risk for temperate ectotherms. Using aquatic mesocosms, Yvon-Durocher et al. show that human-induced climate change could, in some cases, actually enhance the diversity of local communities, increasing productivity. Blending these theoretical and empirical results with computational models will improve forecasts of biodiversity loss and altered ecosystem processes due to climate change. Public Library of Science 2015-12-17 /pmc/articles/PMC4682990/ /pubmed/26680131 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1002323 Text en © 2015 Damien A. Fordham http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited. |
| repository_type |
Open Access Journal |
| institution_category |
Foreign Institution |
| institution |
US National Center for Biotechnology Information |
| building |
NCBI PubMed |
| collection |
Online Access |
| language |
English |
| format |
Online |
| author |
Fordham, Damien A. |
| spellingShingle |
Fordham, Damien A. Mesocosms Reveal Ecological Surprises from Climate Change |
| author_facet |
Fordham, Damien A. |
| author_sort |
Fordham, Damien A. |
| title |
Mesocosms Reveal Ecological Surprises from Climate Change |
| title_short |
Mesocosms Reveal Ecological Surprises from Climate Change |
| title_full |
Mesocosms Reveal Ecological Surprises from Climate Change |
| title_fullStr |
Mesocosms Reveal Ecological Surprises from Climate Change |
| title_full_unstemmed |
Mesocosms Reveal Ecological Surprises from Climate Change |
| title_sort |
mesocosms reveal ecological surprises from climate change |
| description |
Understanding, predicting, and mitigating the impacts of climate change on biodiversity poses one of the most crucial challenges this century. Currently, we know more about how future climates are likely to shift across the globe than about how species will respond to these changes. Two recent studies show how mesocosm experiments can hasten understanding of the ecological consequences of climate change on species’ extinction risk, community structure, and ecosystem functions. Using a large-scale terrestrial warming experiment, Bestion et al. provide the first direct evidence that future global warming can increase extinction risk for temperate ectotherms. Using aquatic mesocosms, Yvon-Durocher et al. show that human-induced climate change could, in some cases, actually enhance the diversity of local communities, increasing productivity. Blending these theoretical and empirical results with computational models will improve forecasts of biodiversity loss and altered ecosystem processes due to climate change. |
| publisher |
Public Library of Science |
| publishDate |
2015 |
| url |
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4682990/ |
| _version_ |
1613513986280521728 |