A framework for understanding climate change impacts through intra- and interspecific asymmetries in climate change responses

Abstract

A crucial challenge in ecology is understanding and predicting population responses to climate change. A key component of population responses to climate change are asymmetries in which focal intra- or interspecific rates change in response to climate change due to non-compensatory changes in the underlying components determining the focal rates. Asymmetric climate change responses have been documented in a wide variety of systems and arise at multiple levels of organization both within and across species. Yet, how these asymmetries combine to influence the demographics of populations is often unclear, as varied asymmetries are typically not mapped back to the fundamental demographic asymmetry (differential changes in a species’ birth and death rates) that underlies population and community change. Here we provide a flexible framework that incorporates asymmetric changes in rates within and among species and maps their consequences for additional rates across scales to their eventual effects on population growth rates. Throughout we provide specific example illustrations of the framework. We hope that this framework helps to unify research on asymmetric climate change responses, provides researchers with a common language to discuss asymmetric responses, and enhances our ability to understand how populations are responding to climate change.