Long-distance migrations are among the wonders of the natural world, but this multitaxon review shows that the characteristics of species that undertake such movements appear to make them particularly vulnerable to detrimental impacts of climate change. Migrants are key components of biological systems in high latitude regions, where the speed and magnitude of climate change impacts are greatest. They also rely on highly productive seasonal habitats, including wetlands and ocean upwellings that, with climate change, may become less food-rich and predictable in space and time. While migrants are adapted to adjust their behaviour with annual changes in the weather, the decoupling of climatic variables between geographically separate breeding and nonbreeding grounds is beginning to result in mistimed migration. Furthermore, human land-use and activity patterns will constrain the ability of many species to modify their migratory routes and may increase the stress induced by climate change. Adapting conservation strategies for migrants in the light of climate change will require substantial shifts in site designation policies, flexibility of management strategies and the integration of forward planning for both people and wildlife. While adaptation to changes may be feasible for some terrestrial systems, wildlife in the marine ecosystem may be more dependent on the degree of climate change mitigation that is achievable.

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Predicted effects of climate change include high extinction risk for many species, but confidence in these predictions is undermined by a perceived lack of empirical support. Many studies have now documented ecological responses to recent climate change, providing the opportunity to test whether the magnitude and nature of recent responses match predictions. Here, we perform a global and multitaxon metaanalysis to show that empirical evidence for the realized effects of climate change supports predictions of future extinction risk. We use International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List criteria as a common scale to estimate extinction risks from a wide range of climate impacts, ecological responses, and methods of analysis, and we compare predictions with observations. Mean extinction probability across studies making predictions of the future effects of climate change was 7% by 2100 compared with 15% based on observed responses. After taking account of possible bias in the type of climate change impact analyzed and the parts of the world and taxa studied, there was less discrepancy between the two approaches: predictions suggested a mean extinction probability of 10% across taxa and regions, whereas empirical evidence gave a mean probability of 14%. As well as mean overall extinction probability, observations also supported predictions in terms of variability in extinction risk and the relative risk associated with broad taxonomic groups and geographic regions. These results suggest that predictions are robust to methodological assumptions and provide strong empirical support for the assertion that anthropogenic climate change is now a major threat to global biodiversity.anthropogenic warming | elevated temperature | extinction crisis | climate warming M any scientists argue that we are entering the sixth great mass extinction and that anthropogenic climate change is one of the major threats to global biodiversity (1-3). Comprehensive, multitaxon reviews suggest that 10-70% of plant and animal species assessed so far could be at increased risk of extinction from climate change (4) or that by 2050, climate-induced changes in habitat will commit 15-37% of species to extinction (1). Both these estimates are based on approaches that can be sensitive to ecological and methodological assumptions (5-8), and the latter study considers only geographical range shifts resulting from changes in temperature and rainfall (1). Many species are also expected to be adversely affected by changes in sea-level and ocean chemistry (9), and the impacts of climate change may include breakdowns in biological interactions as species respond individualistically to climate change (10), loss of habitat because of sea-level rise (11), and higher mortality because of increased ocean acidity (12). The spectrum of approaches used to predict ecological responses to climate change has also broadened in recent years, enabling more robust estimates of future changes to be made (13). Here, we use International Union for Conservation...

Detecting coherent signals of climate change is best achieved by conducting expansive, long-term studies. Here, using counts of waders (Charadrii) collected from ca. 3500 sites over 30 years and covering a major portion of western Europe, we present the largestscale study to show that faunal abundance is influenced by climate in winter. We demonstrate that the 'weighted centroids' of populations of seven species of wader occurring in internationally important numbers have undergone substantial shifts of up to 115 km, generally in a northeasterly direction. To our knowledge, this shift is greater than that recorded in any other study, but closer to what would be expected as a result of the spatial distribution of ecological zones. We establish that year-to-year changes in site abundance have been positively correlated with concurrent changes in temperature, but that this relationship is most marked towards the colder extremities of the birds' range, suggesting that shifts have occurred as a result of range expansion and that responses to climate change are temperature dependent. Many attempts to model the future impacts of climate change on the distribution of organisms, assume uniform responses or shifts throughout a species' range or with temperature, but our results suggest that this may not be a valid approach. We propose that, with warming temperatures, hitherto unsuitable sites in northeastern Europe will host increasingly important wader numbers, but that this may not be matched by declines elsewhere within the study area. The need to establish that such changes are occurring is accentuated by the statutory importance of this taxon in the designation of protected areas.