Shifts In Species Distributions Research Articles

Effects of climate change and variability on large pelagic fish in the Northwest Atlantic Ocean: implications for improving climate resilient management for pelagic longline fisheries

Climate change influences marine environmental conditions and is projected to increase future environmental variability. In the North Atlantic, such changes will affect the behavior and spatiotemporal distributions of large pelagic fish species (i.e., tunas, billfishes, and sharks). Generally, studies on these species have focused on specific climate-induced changes in abiotic factors separately (e.g., water temperature) and on the projection of shifts in species abundance and distribution based on these changes. In this review, we consider the latest research on spatiotemporal effects of climate-induced environmental changes to HMS’ life history, ecology, physiology, distribution, and habitat selection, and describe how the complex interplay between climate-induced changes in biotic and abiotic factors, including fishing, drives changes in species productivity and distribution in the Northwest Atlantic. This information is used to provide a baseline for investigating implications for management of pelagic longline fisheries and to identify knowledge gaps in this region. Warmer, less oxygenated waters may result in higher post-release mortality in bycatch species. Changes in climate variability will likely continue to alter the dynamics of oceanographic processes regulating species behavior and distribution, as well as fishery dynamics, creating challenges for fishery management. Stock assessments need to account for climate-induced changes in species abundance through the integration of species-specific responses to climate variability. Climate-induced changes will likely result in misalignment between current spatial and temporal management measures and the spatiotemporal distribution of these species. Finally, changes in species interactions with fisheries will require focused research to develop best practices for adaptive fisheries management and species recovery.

Species redistribution creates unequal outcomes for multispecies fisheries under projected climate change.

Climate change drives species distribution shifts, affecting the availability of resources people rely upon for food and livelihoods. These impacts are complex, manifest at local scales, and have diverse effects across multiple species. However, for wild capture fisheries, current understanding is dominated by predictions for individual species at coarse spatial scales. We show that species-specific responses to localized environmental changes will alter the collection of co-occurring species within established fishing footprints along the U.S. West Coast. We demonstrate that availability of the most economically valuable, primary target species is highly likely to decline coastwide in response to warming and reduced oxygen concentrations, while availability of the most abundant, secondary target species will potentially increase. A spatial reshuffling of primary and secondary target species suggests regionally heterogeneous opportunities for fishers to adapt by changing where or what they fish. Developing foresight into the collective responses of species at local scales will enable more effective and tangible adaptation pathways for fishing communities.

Incorporating global change reveals extinction risk beyond the current Red List

Global changes over the past few decades have caused species distribution shifts and triggered population declines and local extinctions of many species. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species (Red List) is regarded as the most comprehensive tool for assessing species extinction risk and has been used at regional, national, and global scales. However, most Red Lists rely on the past and current status of species populations and distributions but do not adequately reflect the risks induced by future global changes. Using distribution maps of >4,000 endemic woody species in China, combined with ensembled species distribution models, we assessed the species threat levels under future climate and land-cover changes using the projected changes in species' suitable habitats and compared our updated Red List with China's existing Red List. We discover an increased number of threatened species in the updated Red List and increased threat levels of >50% of the existing threatened species compared with the existing one. Over 50% of the newly identified threatened species are not adequately covered by protected areas. The Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau, rather than the Hengduan Mountains, is the distribution center of threatened species on the updated Red Lists, as opposed to the threatened species on the existing Red List. Our findings suggest that using Red Lists without considering the impacts of future global changes will underestimate the extinction risks and lead to a biased estimate of conservation priorities, potentially limiting the ability to meet the Kunming-Montreal global conservation targets.

A Brave New World: Managing for Biodiversity Conservation under Ecosystem Transformation

Traditional conservation practices have primarily relied on maintaining biodiversity by preserving species and habitats in place. Many regions are experiencing unprecedented environmental conditions, shifts in species distribution and habitats, and high turnover in species composition, resulting in ecological transformation. Natural resource managers have lacked tools for identifying and selecting strategies to manage ecosystem transformation. A recently formalized decision support framework provides a way for managers to resist, accept, or direct (RAD) the trajectory of change. We begin by identifying how historical conservation practices are built into the RAD framework. Next, we describe how RAD can be used to implement climate change adaptation actions, using examples from the Mojave Desert to provide ecological context. Third, we discuss how the RAD framework can assist with the creation of conservation portfolios, facilitating the maintenance of overall biodiversity across a landscape. Preserving species assemblages in their current state, or restoring them to historical conditions, will not always be possible, and RAD allows for explicit deliberation about when and where to prioritize scarce resources. We conclude with a set of guidelines for conservation practitioners or managers moving forward. Although operating under an increasingly uncertain future is daunting, managers can utilize RAD to conserve biodiversity and effectively handle ecosystem transformation.

Rapid tropicalization evidence of subtidal seaweed assemblages along a coastal transitional zone

Anthropogenic climate change, particularly seawater warming, is expected to drive quick shifts in marine species distribution transforming coastal communities. These shifts in distribution will be particularly noticeable in biogeographical transition zones. The continental Portuguese coast stretches from north to south along 900 km. Despite this short spatial scale, the strong physical gradient intensified by the Iberian upwelling creates a transition zone where seaweed species from boreal and Lusitanian-Mediterranean origin coexist. On the northern coast, kelp marine forests thrive in the cold, nutrient-rich oceanic waters. In the south, communities resemble Mediterranean-type seaweed assemblages and are dominated by turfs. Recent evidence suggests that in these coastal areas, marine intertidal species are shifting their distribution edges as a result of rising seawater temperatures. Taking advantage of previous abundance data collected in 2012 from subtidal seaweed communities, a new sampling program was carried out in the same regions in 2018 to assess recent changes. The results confirmed the latitudinal gradient in macroalgal assemblages. More importantly we found significant structural and functional changes in a short period of six years, with regional increases of abundance of warm-affinity species, small seaweeds like turfs. Species richness, diversity, and biomass increase, all accompanied by an increase of community temperature index (CTI). Our findings suggest that subtidal seaweed communities in this transitional area have undergone major changes within a few years. Evidence of “fast tropicalization” of the subtidal communities of the Portuguese coast are strong indication of the effects of anthropic climate change over coastal assemblages.

Tropical estuarine ecosystem change under the interacting influences of future climate and ecosystem restoration.

One of the largest restoration programs in the world, the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP) aims to restore freshwater inputs to Everglades wetlands and the Florida Bay estuary. This study predicted how the Florida Bay ecosystem may respond to hydrological restoration from CERP within the context of contemporary projected impacts of sea-level rise (SLR) and increased future temperatures. A spatial-temporal dynamic model (Ecospace) was used to develop a spatiotemporal food web model incorporating environmental drivers of salinity, salinity variation, temperature, depth, distance to mangrove, and seagrass abundance and was used to predict responses of biomass, fisheries catch, and ecosystem resilience between current and future conditions. Changes in biomass between the current and future scenario suggest a suite of winners and losers, with many estuarine species increasing in both total biomass and spatial distribution. Notable biomass increases were predicted for important forage species, including bay anchovy (+32%), hardhead halfbeak (+19%), and pinfish (+31%), while decreases were predicted in mullet (-88%), clupeids (-55%), hardhead silverside (-15%), mojarras (-117%), and Portunid crabs (-16%). Increases in sportfish biomass included the angler-preferred spotted seatrout (+9%), red drum (+10%), and gray snapper (+8%), while decreases included sheepshead (-40%), Atlantic tarpon (-73%), and common snook (-507%). Ecosystem resilience and fisheries catch of angler-preferred species were predicted to improve in the future scenario in total, although a localized decline in resilience predicted for the Central Region may warrant further attention. Our results suggest the Florida Bay ecosystem is likely to achieve restoration benefits in spite of, and in some cases facilitated by, the projected future impacts from climate change due to the system's shallow depth and detrital dominance. The incorporation of climate impacts into long-term restoration planning using ecosystem modeling in similar systems facing unknown futures of SLR, warming seas, and shifting species distributions is recommended.

Spatial dynamics of Maine lobster landings in a changing coastal system

Continued warming of oceans has caused global shifts in marine species distributions. This can result in changes in the spatial distribution of landings and have distributional impacts on marine resource-dependent communities. We evaluated the spatial dynamics of American lobster (Homarus americanus) landings in coastal Maine, which supports one of the most valuable U.S. fisheries. We coupled a bioclimate envelope model and a generalized additive model to project spatial dynamics of lobster landings under possible climate scenarios. This coupled model was then used to forecast future lobster habitat suitability based on IPCC RCP climate scenarios and predict distributions of fishery landings from this projected lobster habitat suitability. The historical spatial distribution of fishery landings shows the highest proportional landings in Maine’s Southern (southwest) regions. The current distribution of landings shows higher proportional landings in Downeast (northeast) regions with the highest proportional landings in Midcoast (middle) regions. Our results suggest that while the proportion of landings in each zone will remain stable, changes in habitat suitability in the spring and fall will reduce total landings. Future habitat suitability is projected to decrease in spring but increase in fall in Downeast areas. Downeast landings are projected to decrease in the next 30 years, then increase over the subsequent 80 years, depending on RCP scenarios and abundance regimes. Midcoast landings are projected to decrease while Southcoast landings are expected to stay constant. This study develops an approach to link climate change effects to fishery landings. These findings have long-term implications for sustainable, localized management of the Maine lobster fishery in a changing climate.

Warm oceans exacerbate Chinook salmon bycatch in the Pacific hake fishery driven by thermal and diel depth‐use behaviours

AbstractFisheries bycatch impacts marine species globally and understanding the underlying ecological and behavioural mechanisms could improve bycatch mitigation and forecasts in novel conditions. Oceans are rapidly warming causing shifts in marine species distributions with unknown, but likely, bycatch consequences. We examined whether thermal and diel depth‐use behaviours influenced bycatch of a keystone species (Chinook salmon; Oncorhynchus tshawytscha, Salmonidae) in the largest fishery on the US West Coast (Pacific hake; Merluccius productus, Merlucciidae) with annual consequences in a warming ocean. We used Generalized Additive Models with 20 years of data including 54,509 hauls from the at‐sea hake fishery spanning Oregon and Washington coasts including genetic information for five salmon populations. Our results demonstrate that Chinook salmon bycatch rates increased in warm ocean years explained by salmon depth‐use behaviours. Chinook salmon typically occupy shallower water column depths compared to hake. However, salmon moved deeper when sea surface temperatures (SSTs) were warm and at night, which increased overlap with hake and exacerbated bycatch rates. We show that night fishing reductions (a voluntary bycatch mitigation strategy) are effective in reducing salmon bycatch in cool SSTs by limiting fishing effort when diel vertical movements bring salmon deeper but becomes less effective in warm SSTs as salmon seek deeper thermal refugia during the day. Thermal and diel behaviours were more pronounced in southern compared with northern salmon populations. We provide mechanistic support that climate change may intensify Chinook salmon bycatch in the hake fishery and demonstrate how an inferential approach can inform bycatch management in a changing world.

The performance of model-based indices given alternative sampling strategies in a climate-adaptive survey design

Species-distribution shifts are becoming commonplace due to climate-driven change. Difficult decisions to modify survey extent and frequency are often made due to this change and constraining survey budgets. This often leads to spatially and temporally unbalanced survey coverage. Spatio-temporal models are increasingly used to account for spatially unbalanced sampling data when estimating abundance indices used for stock assessment, but their performance in these contexts has received little research attention. We therefore seek to answer two questions: (1) how well can a spatio-temporal model estimate the proportion of abundance in a new “climate-adaptive” spatial stratum? and (2) when sampling must be reduced, does annual sampling at reduced density or biennial sampling result in better model-based abundance indices? We develop a spatially varying coefficient model in the R package VAST using the eastern Bering Sea (EBS) bottom trawl survey and its northern Bering Sea (NBS) extension to address these questions. We first reduce the spatial extent of survey data for 30 out of 38 years of a real survey in the EBS and fit a spatio-temporal model to four commercially important species using these “data-reduction” scenarios. This shows that a spatio-temporal model generally produces similar trends and density estimates over time when large portions of the sampling domain are not sampled. However, when the central distribution of a population is not sampled the estimates are inaccurate and have higher uncertainty. We also conducted a simulation experiment conditioned upon estimates for walleye pollock (Gadus chalcogrammus) in the EBS and NBS. Many species in this region are experiencing distributional shifts attributable to climate change with species historically centered in the southeastern portion of the survey being increasingly encountered in the NBS. The NBS was occasionally surveyed in the past, but has been surveyed more regularly in recent years to document distributional shifts. Expanding the survey to the NBS is costly and given limited resources the utility of reducing survey frequency versus reducing sampling density to increase survey spatial extent is under debate. To address this question, we simulate survey data from alternative sampling designs that involve (1) annual full sampling, (2) reduced sampling in the NBS every year, or (3) biennial and full sampling in the NBS. Our results show that annual sampling, even with reduced sampling density, provides less biased abundance information than biennial sampling. We therefore conclude that ideally fishery-independent surveys should be conducted annually and spatio-temporal models can help to provide reliable estimates.

Effects of Environmental Change on Species Diversity

Purpose: The aim of the study is to assess the effects of environmental changes on species diversity
 Methodology: This study adopted a desktop methodology. This study used secondary data from which include review of existing literature from already published studies and reports that was easily accessed through online journals and libraries
 Findings: The study found that environmental changes, such as deforestation, habitat fragmentation, and urbanization, lead to a decline in species diversity. Climate change has emerged as a critical driver of changes in species diversity. Rising temperatures, altered precipitation patterns, and sea-level rise have caused shifts in species distributions, changes in community composition, and reductions in species richness. Pollution including water and air pollution, has detrimental effects on species diversity especially in aquatic ecosystems.
 Unique Contribution to Theory, Practice and Policy: The study was anchored on the theory of island biogeography which was propounded by Robert MacArthur and E. O. Wilson and niche theory which was originally proposed by G.E. Hutchinson. The study recommended that conservation efforts should prioritize habitat preservation and restoration. Protecting and restoring natural habitats is crucial for maintaining species diversity. Conservation practices should focus on minimizing habitat loss, creating ecological corridors, and rehabilitating degraded habitats. Environmental policies and regulations should be designed to mitigate the drivers of environmental change and promote sustainable practices.

Characterizing dominant patterns of spatiotemporal variation for a transboundary groundfish assemblage

AbstractMany mobile marine taxa are changing their distributions in response to climate change. Such movements pose a challenge to fisheries monitoring and management, particularly in systems where climate‐adaptive and ecosystem‐based management objectives are emphasized. While shifts in species distributions can be discerned from long‐term fisheries‐independent monitoring data, distilling coherent patterns across space and time from such datasets can be challenging, particularly for transboundary stocks. One approach for identifying dominant patterns of spatiotemporal variation that has been widely used in physical atmospheric and oceanographic studies is empirical orthogonal function (EOF) analysis, wherein spatiotemporal variation is separated into time‐series of annual factor loadings and spatial response maps. Here, we apply an extension of EOF analysis that has been modified for compatibility with biological sampling data to a combined US–Russian fisheries‐independent survey dataset that spans the eastern (United States) and western (Russia) Bering Sea shelf to estimate dominant patterns of spatiotemporal variation for 10 groundfish species at a shelf‐wide scale. EOF identified one axis of variability that was coherent with the extent of cold (≤0°C) near‐bottom waters (the cold pool) previously shown to be a key influence on species distributions and ecosystem structure for the Bering Sea. However, the leading axis of variability identified by our EOF analysis was characterized by low frequency changes in the distributions of several species over longer time scales. Our analysis has important implications for predicting variation in species distributions over time and demonstrates a widely applicable method for leveraging combined fisheries‐independent survey datasets to characterize community‐level responses to ecosystem change at basin‐wide scales.

Butterfly species respond differently to climate warming and land use change in the northern Alps

Climate change has a worldwide impact on biodiversity and ecosystem functions, in particular by causing shifts in species distributions and changes in species communities. Here, we analyse altitudinal range shifts of 30,604 lowland butterfly and burnet moth records from 119 species over the past seven decades across the federal state of Salzburg (northern Austria) spanning an altitudinal gradient of >2500 m. For each species, we compiled species-specific traits on their ecology, behaviour, and life-cycle. During the study period, the butterflies have shifted their average occurrence and also lower and upper occurrence limits >300 m uphill. This shift is particularly obvious for the last ten years. Habitat generalist and mobile species exhibited strongest and habitat specialist and sedentary species weakest shifts. Our results underline that the effects of climate change have a strong and currently increasing impact on the patterns of species distribution and local community composition. Hence, we confirm the observation that ubiquistic, mobile species with a broad ecological amplitude can cope better with environmental changes than specialist and sedentary species. Furthermore, the strong changes in land use in lowland areas might additionally enhanced this up-hill shift.

Three alien bark and ambrosia beetles (Coleoptera, Curculionidae, Scolytinae) new to Switzerland

Identifying alien species is important to ensure the early detection of biological invasions and survey shifts in species distributions in the context of global change. Here, we report on three alien bark and ambrosia beetles newly detected in Switzerland: Cyclorhipidion distinguendum (Eggers, 1930), C. pelliculosum (Eichhoff, 1878), and Hypothenemus eruditus (Westwood, 1834). These species were recorded for the first time during a comprehensive survey of saproxylic beetles accross major forest types and along an altitudinal gradient during the entire growing season in the southern Alps, in the canton of Ticino. Their local abundance and number of occurrences accross different lowland forest habitats, including alluvial forests of national importance, indicates that all three species are already naturalized. Given their polyphagy, it is likely that all three species will become more extensively distributed across Switzerland, with a yet unknown environmental impact.

Aquatic species shows asymmetric distribution range shifts in native and non-native areas

IntroductionClimate change is reshaping the geographical distribution of species across the globe. In marine ecosystems, climate change creates novel challenges to an environment impacted by numerous anthropogenic stressors. Forecasting shifts in species distribution, including the expansion of non-indigenous species under climate change scenarios, is a management challenge for today’s world.MethodsWe applied Bayesian Additive Regression Tree (BART) models to investigate the environmental factors modulating the occurrence and habitat preferences of the Atlantic blue crab Callinectes sapidus Rathbun, 1896 in native and non-native areas. With BART models, we also aimed to predict its current and future distributions under two climate change scenarios (RCPs 4.5 and 8.5). BART models were performed using global occurrences of the Atlantic blue crab – recorded from 1830 to 2022 – and several environmental covariates (i.e., water temperature, salinity, current velocity, and rugosity). Model accuracy was assessed with the Area Under the Curve (AUC) and True Skill Statistics (TSS) criteria. Cross-validation experiments were made to balance accuracy prediction and uncertainty model prediction intervals.Results and discussionAUC and TSS values indicated that data validation was successful for the BART model. Water temperature was the most critical variable affecting the presence probability of the Atlantic blue crab. The BART model predicts asymmetric distribution range shifts on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. The non-native populations will experience broader shifts in their distribution range than in the native range, and the RCP 8.5 scenario model outputs predict a wider distribution range by the end of the century. Overall, we anticipate significant ecological changes in native and non-native areas. The range expansion in native areas is often equivalent to the ecological shifts induced by invasive species, so lessons learned by ecologists and managers in non-native areas will provide actionable insights to managers in native areas.

Seasonal and elevational changes of plant-pollinator interaction networks in East African mountains.

Across an elevation gradient, several biotic and abiotic factors influence community assemblages of interacting species leading to a shift in species distribution, functioning, and ultimately topologies of species interaction networks. However, empirical studies of climate-driven seasonal and elevational changes in plant-pollinator networks are rare, particularly in tropical ecosystems. Eastern Afromontane Biodiversity Hotspots in Kenya, East Africa. We recorded plant-bee interactions at 50 study sites between 515 and 2600 m asl for a full year, following all four major seasons in this region. We analysed elevational and seasonal network patterns using generalised additive models (GAMs) and quantified the influence of climate, floral resource availability, and bee diversity on network structures using a multimodel inference framework. We recorded 16,741 interactions among 186 bee and 314 plant species of which a majority involved interactions with honeybees. We found that nestedness and bee species specialisation of plant-bee interaction networks increased with elevation and that the relationships were consistent in the cold-dry and warm-wet seasons respectively. Link rewiring increased in the warm-wet season with elevation but remained indifferent in the cold-dry seasons. Conversely, network modularity and plant species were more specialised at lower elevations during both the cold-dry and warm-wet seasons, with higher values observed during the warm-wet seasons. We found flower and bee species diversity and abundance rather than direct effects of climate variables to best predict modularity, specialisation, and link rewiring in plant-bee-interaction networks. This study highlights changes in network architectures with elevation suggesting a potential sensitivity of plant-bee interactions with climate warming and changes in rainfall patterns along the elevation gradients of the Eastern Afromontane Biodiversity Hotspot.

Contributions of phenotypic integration, plasticity and genetic adaptation to adaptive capacity relating to drought in Banksia marginata (Proteaceae).

The frequency and intensity of drought events are predicted to increase because of climate change, threatening biodiversity and terrestrial ecosystems in many parts of the world. Drought has already led to declines in functionally important tree species, which are documented in dieback events, shifts in species distributions, local extinctions, and compromised ecosystem function. Understanding whether tree species possess the capacity to adapt to future drought conditions is a major conservation challenge. In this study, we assess the capacity of a functionally important plant species from south-eastern Australia (Banksia marginata, Proteaceae) to adapt to water-limited environments. A water-manipulated common garden experiment was used to test for phenotypic plasticity and genetic adaptation in seedlings sourced from seven provenances of contrasting climate-origins (wet and dry). We found evidence of local adaptation relating to plant growth investment strategies with populations from drier climate-origins showing greater growth in well-watered conditions. The results also revealed that environment drives variation in physiological (stomatal conductance, predawn and midday water potential) and structural traits (wood density, leaf dry matter content). Finally, these results indicate that traits are coordinated to optimize conservation of water under water-limited conditions and that trait coordination (phenotypic integration) does not constrain phenotypic plasticity. Overall, this study provides evidence for adaptive capacity relating to drought conditions in B. marginata, and a basis for predicting the response to climate change in this functionally important plant species.

Resident species, not immigrants, drive reorganization of estuarine fish assemblages in response to warming.

Climate change is reshaping biological communities, as species track environmental temperature. Assemblage reorganization is underpinned by shifts in species abundance and distribution, but studies often focus on documenting compositional turnover. As a consequence, phenomena such as the tropicalization of temperate communities have been widely associated with increased occupancy of warm-affinity species. Abundance-weighted change in thermal affinity can be tracked with the Community Temperature Index (CTI), and decomposed into four processes: tropicalization (increasing warm-affinity), borealization (increasing cold-affinity), deborealization (decreasing cold-affinity), and detropicalization (decreasing warm-affinity). Further evaluation of these processes according to species persistence (i.e., immigrant, emigrant, and resident) may provide insights on whether novel communities emerge primarily from local shifts in species abundance or distribution. Using long-term data on fish assemblages undergoing climate change's effects across 19 temperate estuaries surveyed for at least 20 years, we hypothesized (1) deborealization is the main process reshaping communities under climate change, and (2) the contribution of resident species to processes reshaping communities surpass the ones from immigrants and emigrants. Community dissimilarity was calculated through the Temporal Beta Index (TBI), which was further decomposed into species and individual losses and gains. These values were then used as effect sizes in the meta-analyses performed to detect systematic trends in assemblage reorganization in response to climate change. We also calculated CTI and the strength of temperature-related processes for resident, immigrant and emigrant species. Species and individual gains outweighed losses in estuaries. Temperature was correlated with changes in species abundance, but not occurrence. Fish abundance decreased with warming, and initially cooler estuaries gained more fish than warmer ones. Novel communities were shaped by a variety of processes, but mainly tropicalization. Assemblage reorganization was primarily driven by shifts in abundance of resident species with distinct thermal affinities, while contributions of arriving and exiting species played a secondary role. These findings reveal that novel communities are drawn primarily from the local species pool, due to changes in climate-related drivers that favor distinct resident species.

Biodiversity transformations in the global ocean: A climate change and conservation management perspective.

Understanding the biological diversity of different communities and evaluating the risks to biological sustainability in a time of rapid environmental change is a key challenge for providing an adapting management approach for biodiversity transformations in the ocean linked to human well-being. (Photo credit: Andrea Belgrano).

Resampling alpine herbarium records reveals changes in plant traits over space and time

Abstract Climate warming causes upward shifts in plant species distributions, resulting in an influx of species from lower elevations into alpine plant communities. Plant functional trait changes along elevation gradients and over time may reflect these changing conditions. Intraspecific trait variation measured from herbarium records offers a way to observe such changes in trait values over time. We selected four species: Poa alpina and Polygonum viviparum found in alpine grasslands, and Cardamine resedifolia and Ranunculus glacialis found in high‐alpine to subnival scree habitats. We measured several functional traits from (i) herbarium records collected between 1880 and 1950 and from (ii) individuals resampled in 2014 along an elevation gradient covering >1500 m within the same study region in the Swiss Alps. By comparing (i) against (ii) for each species separately, we analysed temporal changes in the distribution of traits along the studied elevation gradient. After a century of climate warming, the change in the relationship linking plant functional traits with elevation was species dependent. Size‐related and reproductive functional trait values for P. viviparum increased over time, increasing at lower, but not higher elevations. Poa alpina's size‐related traits increased consistently with time along the elevation gradient. Most of C. resedifolia's size‐related and flowering traits decreased over time at lower elevations and converged at higher elevations. Finally, R. glacialis traits did not respond to time alone—reproductive traits decreased over time at lower, and increased at higher elevations, reversing their historical trait distributions. The negative trend for vegetative trait values with elevation did not change over time, however. In 2014, at lower elevations, all species mainly occurred on their typical microhabitat types, but occurrence on other microhabitats increased with elevation for all species. Synthesis: Contrasting temporal changes in the distribution of growth and reproductive trait values between alpine grassland and alpine‐subnival scree species, especially at lower elevations, suggest that climate warming effects vary among species. Additionally, species' physiological constraints and availability of suitable microhabitats may further impact species' distribution changes. Further warming may confine the distribution of high‐alpine plant species to even higher elevations, or microclimates currently difficult to colonise by lower‐alpine species.

Primates facing climate crisis in a tropical forest hotspot will lose climatic suitable geographical range

Global climate changes affect biodiversity and cause species distribution shifts, contractions, and expansions. Climate change and disease are emerging threats to primates, and approximately one-quarter of primates’ ranges have temperatures over historical ones. How will climate changes influence Atlantic Forest primate ranges? We used habitat suitability models and measured potential changes in area and distributions shifts. Climate change expected in 2100 may change the distribution area of Atlantic Forest primates. Fourteen species (74%) are predicted to lose more than 50% of their distribution, and nine species (47%) are predicted to lose more than 75% of their distribution. The balance was negative, indicating a potential future loss, and the strength of the reduction in the distribution is related to the severity of climate change (SSP scenarios). Directional shifts were detected to the south. The projected mean centroid latitudinal shift is ~ 51 km to the south for 2100 SSP5-8.5 scenario. The possibility of dispersal will depend on suitable routes and landscape configuration. Greenhouse gas emissions should be urgently reduced. Our results also emphasize that no more forest loss is acceptable in Atlantic Forest, and restoration, canopy bridges, friendly agroecosystems, and monitoring of infrastructure projects are urgent to enable dealing with climate change.