Species living in areas with high daily temperature fluctuations are more vulnerable to climate change, a research team has found.
The team, led by Academia Sinica research fellow Shen Sheng-feng (沈聖峰), discovered that species’ distribution is negatively correlated with daily temperature range, meaning organisms living in areas with high daily temperature variations have a smaller distribution range.
Classic ecological hypotheses predict that greater climatic variability would result in broader tolerance and thereby wider geographic distribution of species, and accordingly, tropical mountain species have been considered more vulnerable to climate change than temperate mountain species, as tropical species are adapted to a relatively stable climate and therefore have a narrower elevation range, Shen said.
The team examined the hypotheses with an analysis of the distribution ranges of 16,592 species of rodents, bats, birds, lizards, snakes, salamanders and frogs across 180 mountainous areas around the world, and found that the hypotheses are only partly true.
While the analysis confirmed that greater seasonal climate variations result in greater distribution ranges across elevations, it also discovered that the distribution range narrows as daily temperate range widens.
While saying that species living in areas with higher daily temperature fluctuations tend to live and reproduce in smaller territories to concentrate their resources, the team proposed that species’ ranges are inversely influenced by daily and seasonal climatic variability in opposite ways — contradicting all existing hypotheses on the relationship between climatic variability and species range size.
The findings show that climate change has a strong influence on tropical species and organisms living in temperate climates with high daily temperature variations, Shen said, adding that the dry forests in Australia, South America and north Africa, where daily temperatures vary greatly, might be among the first to be hit by climate change.
“Species range size and factors limiting species distribution are fundamental to understanding ecological, conservation and economic issues as diverse as invasive species, climate-driven range shifts of species, distribution of vector-borne diseases and areas suitable for food production. Our new findings and proposed novel hypothesis will likely be of great interest not only to biologists, but also to climatologists, public health scientists and economists,” he said.
“Climate change has triggered species range shifts. The key to explaining this phenomenon is to understand the underlying physiological adaptations and our research might provide a possible mechanism for explaining species range shifts,” the co-first author and National Cheng Kung University biology professor Chen I-ching (陳一菁) said.
The findings were published in the journal Science last week.
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