The tropical frontier in avian climate impact research

Abstract

The impacts of climate change on tropical biodiversity are a subject of active debate. Global reviews show that climate change is having far-reaching effects on biodiversity (Sala et al. 2000, Walther et al. 2002, Root et al. 2003, Parmesan & Yohe 2003, Parmesan 2006, Rosenzweig et al. 2007, 2008, Miller-Rushing et al. 2010), but these studies tend to focus on temperate environments, with rare mention of changes in the tropics (Laurance et al. 2011, Wormworth & Sekercioglu 2011). Of the c. 30 000 studies reviewed for the IPCC 2007 report, fewer than 1% were from the tropics (Rosenzweig et al. 2008). The lack of research on climate impacts on tropical biodiversity, combined with the perception of a small absolute magnitude of projected temperature and rainfall changes (Sala et al. 2000, but see Stainforth et al. 2005, Chen et al. 2009), has helped fuel disagreement about the vulnerability of tropical species to ongoing and projected changes. Some studies argue that the effects of climate change will be small relative to the overwhelming impacts of habitat loss (Sala et al. 2000, Sodhi et al. 2004). In contrast, several modelling analyses predict that climate change will be an important extinction driver in the tropics (Williams et al. 2003, Thomas et al. 2004, Shoo et al. 2005, Colwell et al. 2008, Sekercioglu et al. 2008, Hole et al. 2009).