Abstract. The foredune vegetation in the Gulf of Cadiz (SW Spain, S Portugal) was studied by means of morphological characters and functional traits of plants. The 55 vascular species recorded in the area were classified into three functional types: Type I consists mainly of winter annuals of moderate size with soft leaves, showing no presumed adaptations to the dune environment. Plants of Type II are mostly perennials with a below‐ground spreading root network and leaves with presumed adaptations to coastal environmental stress. Type III includes plants mostly capable of being dispersed by sea‐water and of withstanding sand burial. In relatively unstable soil, Type II and Type III plants were found to be more abundant, their relative proportion depending on the dominance of accretion/erosion processes. Increasing cover of Type I plants was associated with relatively more stable soils. The ratios in occurrences of the three types can be used as an indicator of foredune dynamics.

Summary1. We highlight an emerging statistical method, integrated nested Laplace approximation (INLA), which is ideally suited for fitting complex models to many of the rich spatial data sets that ecologists wish to analyse. 2. INLA is an approximation method that nevertheless provides very exact estimates. In this article, we describe the INLA methodology highlighting where it offers opportunities for drawing inference from (spatial) ecological data that would previously have been too complex to make practical model fitting feasible. 3. We use INLA to fit a complex joint model to the spatial pattern formed by a plant species, Thymus carnosus, as well as to the health status of each individual. 4. The key ecological result revealed by our spatial analysis of these data, relates to the distance-to-water covariate. We find that T. carnosus plants are generally healthier when they are further away from the water. 5. We suggest that this may be the result of a combination of (1) plants having alternative rooting strategies depending on how close to water they grow and (2) the rooting strategy determining how well the plants were able to tolerate an unusually dry summer. 6. We anticipate INLA becoming widely used within spatial ecological analysis over the next decade and suggest that both ecologists and statisticians will benefit greatly from working collaboratively to further develop and apply these emerging statistical methods.

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Climate change (CC) and sea level rise (SLR) are phenomena that could have severe impacts on the distribution of coastal dune vegetation. To explore this we modeled the climatic niches of six coastal dunes plant species that grow along the shoreline of the Gulf of Mexico and the Yucatan Peninsula, and projected climatic niches to future potential distributions based on two CC scenarios and SLR projections. Our analyses suggest that distribution of coastal plants will be severely limited, and more so in the case of local endemics (Chamaecrista chamaecristoides, Palafoxia lindenii, Cakile edentula). The possibilities of inland migration to the potential 'new shoreline' will be limited by human infrastructure and ecosystem alteration that will lead to a 'coastal squeeze' of the coastal habitats. Finally, we identified areas as future potential refuges for the six species in central Gulf of Mexico, and northern Yucatán Peninsula especially under CC and SLR scenarios.

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