Systematics and climate change

Abstract

book reviews ISSN 1948‐6596 Systematics and climate change Climate Change, Ecology and Systematics. The Systematics Association Special Volume 78. Trevor R. Hodkinson, Michael B. Jones, Stephen Waldren & John A. Parnell (editors), 2011, Cambridge University Press. 524 pp. £75 (hardback) ISBN: 978‐0‐521‐76609‐8; http://www.cambridge.org Climate change, ecology and systematics reviews what the fields of ecology and taxonomy—the latter in its broad sense of ‘systematics’, which in‐ cludes phylogenetics— have to offer to climate change science. The an‐ swer is: a great deal, espe‐ cially the field of systematics, which is perhaps dealt with more prominently in the book than ecology. This emphasis is understandable because the book is the result of a symposium organised in 2008 under the auspices of the Systematics Asso‐ ciation. The volume of 21 chapters is divided into three principal sections: adaptation, speciation and extinction; biogeography, migration and eco‐ logical niche modelling; and conservation. The breadth of this book is a strength, but it does re‐ sult in a veritable mixed bag of material, from wood anatomy and climate change, to the re‐ sponses of terrestrial green algae to climate change, to the impact of climate change on ash trees. It is something to be dipped into, with the opening chapter by lead editor Trevor Hodkinson serving as a useful guide to which chapters a reader may wish to focus on. As a read from cover to cover, I did find it something of a marathon. There are some excellent and rewarding chapters. For example, as a non‐specialist in both areas, I found the reviews of deep time climate change (Caballero and Lynch) and the effects of climate change on lichen diversity (Ellis and Yahr) very useful. The chapter by McElwain and co‐ authors on the possible effects of long‐term CO 2 fluctuations on plant speciation rates contains some stimulating ideas, for example that raised CO 2 levels directly increased plant speciation rates during the Eocene thermal maximum. Disentan‐ gling such putative effects from others suggested to have operated during this period (e.g. a species –area effect for tropical forest; Jaramillo et al., 2006) is, however, tricky. I also enjoyed the chap‐ ters using phylogenetic methods to understand the effects of climate change on diversification in both Cyclamen (Yesson and Culham) and African rain forest trees (Chatrou et al.). The endeavours of systematic biologists worldwide over the past centuries have left a wealth of museum collections—in the UK, the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew and Edinburgh alone hold 10 million plant specimens—and the world’s preserved plant collections (herbaria) are esti‐ mated to contain 350 million specimens, each giv‐ ing information about occurrences of the plant species they represent. This is a huge and perhaps underutilised resource for understanding the dis‐ tribution of organisms, and especially now for the modelling of species distributions under scenarios of climatic change. It is utilised in this book in sev‐ eral chapters, including that of Simpson et al., who take advantage of the 120,000 sedge speci‐ mens held in the herbarium at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, to explore the effects of future cli‐ matic changes on sedges (Cyperaceae). In places, some chapters do appear to go somewhat off‐piste, though they are, all the same, highly readable. Richard Bateman’s diverse works are always stimulating, and his chapter here is a manifesto for a global change in taxonomic prac‐ tice that really only touches upon links to climate change science. Hall and Miller outline new ap‐ proaches to field plant identification guides; again the link to climate science is somewhat tenuous. Finally, Bernardo gives a review of cryptic evolu‐ tionary diversity (i.e. species that are deeply ge‐ netically distinct but lack obvious morphological differences), but the background given, though excellent, is very lengthy, and one only arrives (exhausted!) at the link to climate change after about 30 pages. Set against these diversions, one could also frontiers of biogeography 5.2, 2013 — © 2013 the authors; journal compilation © 2013 The International Biogeography Society