Hot topics in biodiversity and climate change research.

Barry W Brook,Damien A Fordham

doi:10.12688/f1000research.6508.1

Abstract

With scientific and societal interest in biodiversity impacts of climate change growing enormously over the last decade, we analysed directions and biases in the recent most highly cited data papers in this field of research (from 2012 to 2014). The majority of this work relied on leveraging large databases of already collected historical information (but not paleo- or genetic data), and coupled these to new methodologies for making forward projections of shifts in species' geographical ranges, with a focus on temperate and montane plants. A consistent finding was that the pace of climate-driven habitat change, along with increased frequency of extreme events, is outpacing the capacity of species or ecological communities to respond and adapt.

Highlights

It is halfway through the second decade of the 21st century, and climate change impact has emerged as a “hot topic” in biodiversity research
The momentum to understand how other aspects of global change add to, and reinforce, these threats has built since the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports[3] of 2001 and 2007 and the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment[4] in 2005
There has been a trend towards increased accessibility of climate change data and predictions at finer spatiotemporal resolutions, making it more feasible to do biodiversity climate research[10,11]

Summary

Introduction

It is halfway through the second decade of the 21st century, and climate change impact has emerged as a “hot topic” in biodiversity research. Key findings of the highly cited paper collection for 2012–2014 A broad conclusion of the highly cited papers for 2012–2014 (drawn from the “main message” summaries described in Table 1) is that the pace of climate change-forced habitat change, coupled with the increased frequency of extreme events[15,17] and synergisms that arise with other threat drivers[9,18] and physical barriers[19], is typically outpacing or constraining the capacity of species, communities, and ecosystems to respond and adapt[20,21]. F1000Research 2015, 4(F1000 Faculty Rev):[928] Last updated: 17 JUL 2019 Page 4 of 14

Mammal 3

Methods development

Methods

Findings

Key findings of the paper