A novel tool to assess the effect of intraspecific spatial niche variation on species distribution shifts under climate change

Abstract

Aim: Niche-based models often ignore spatial variation in the climatic niche of a species across its occupied range and the related variation in the response to changing climate conditions. This assumption may lead to inaccurate predictions of species distribution shifts under climate change. Models have been developed to address this issue, but most of them depend upon prior knowledge on evolutionary lineages, phenotypic traits or ecological processes underlying local adaptation or adaptive plasticity. As such information is often lacking, these models are not frequently used to predict distribution shifts for many species. This limits our ability to explore general patterns of change across species.Innovation: Here, we propose a modelling framework that can be applied across a large sample of species to assess their distribution shifts under future climate while exploring the effect of intraspecific spatial variation in the response to climate conditions. The proposed approach does not require a detailed understanding of the processes underlying such variation. The geographical distribution of a species is split into spatial subsets along the gradient of occupied climate conditions. These subsets are considered as proxies for intraspecific spatial niche variation. Local models are built with each subset and their predictions are assembled across the study area | 591 MARTIN eT Al.

Large‐scale spatial variability in urban tolerance of birds

“…Our methodological approach here is similar to others, for example, Martin et al, 2020 used a modelling framework to assess the geographical distribution of species' response to climate by dividing the distribution into spatial subsets along occupied climatic conditions. Similarly, we used spatial variability as a proxy for population‐level variability.…”

Changes in Alpine Butterfly Communities during the Last 40 Years

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Global change on the roof of the world: Vulnerability of Himalayan otter species to land use and climate alterations

“…Consequently, predictions of species response to global change that neglect to account for such intraspecific differences may strongly diverge from those generated from local partitions of species distributions (Martin et al, 2020). This evidence could further explain the difference between our predictions of otter future distribution and those provided by Cianfrani et al (2018).…”

“…Such intraspecific variation in environmental requirements substantially derives from local adaptation or adaptive plasticity along the gradient of environmental conditions (Macdonald et al., 2018). Consequently, predictions of species response to global change that neglect to account for such intraspecific differences may strongly diverge from those generated from local partitions of species distributions (Martin et al., 2020). This evidence could further explain the difference between our predictions of otter future distribution and those provided by Cianfrani et al.…”