Climate change impacts on Australia's eucalypt and coral species: Comparing and sharing knowledge across disciplines

Abstract

Two of Australia's most iconic ecosystems have recently sustained heavy damage related to climatic changes: the extensive eucalypt forests from catastrophic bushfires and the Great Barrier Reef from mass coral bleaching. Despite obvious differences, eucalypt trees and reef corals share some similarities in biology and ecology, particularly in relation to climate change impacts and adaptation. Both groups are the focus of an increasing research effort to characterize and respond to climate changes and here we examine how sharing research experiences can benefit both fields. Four key areas of research are considered: (a) modeling current distributions, (b) assessing impacts of climate change on future distributions, (c) using human‐assisted migration to improve survival, and (d) applying genetic enhancement to improve the species’ survival. Examples of each research area are used to examine potential crossovers, limitations of the methods, and future requirements. We conclude that eucalypt and coral researchers, and indeed researchers for many other endangered taxa, can gain much by comparing experiences and methods, despite the apparent differences in their respective taxa. This article is categorized under: Assessing Impacts of Climate Change > Observed Impacts of Climate Change

Projections for Mexico’s Tropical Rainforests Considering Ecological Niche and Climate Change

“…When compared to similar studies carried out for cloud forest [9], it is possible to foresee a more accentuated combination of floristic elements between both communities due to the change in their PD. However, in this study, we did not consider integrating the future adaptability of trees, appointed as the ability of forest species to grow successfully under climatic conditions different from those of their natural distributions [74].…”

Plant translocations in Europe and the Mediterranean: Geographical and climatic directions and distances from source to host sites

“…All these results suggest that translocations can be a useful tool in species management to facilitate the adaptation of species to climate change (Aitken & Whitlock, 2013; Quigley et al., 2019), although some authors have pointed out that other local adaptation factors, such as soil or biotic interactions, may limit the interest of translocations and assisted gene flow (Bucharova, 2017). The identification of source sites currently experiencing the expected future climatic conditions in host sites is already included in translocation projects for long‐lived trees, which may be part of productive forest plantation programmes (O'Neill et al, 2017) or ecological restoration programmes (Booth & Muir, 2020). It is likely (and hoped) that this approach will be more widely used in the future, notably for translocations of threatened species, although, in these cases, the choice of source and host sites is generally much more restricted than in the case of forest trees.…”

“…The identification of source sites currently experiencing the expected future climatic conditions in host sites is already included in translocation projects for long-lived trees, which may be part of productive forest plantation programmes (O'Neill et al, 2017) or ecological restoration programmes (Booth & Muir, 2020). It is likely (and hoped) that this approach will be more widely used in the future, notably for translocations of threatened species, although, in these cases, the choice of source and host sites is generally much more restricted than in the case of forest trees.…”

A problem with variable selection in a comparison of correlative and process‐based species distribution models: Comments on Higgins et al., 2020

“…The set of 19 BIOCLIM variables was adopted for use by the WorldClim system (Fick & Hijmans, 2017;Hijmans et al, 2005), which with over 20 000 citations in Google Scholar TM is the most widely used source of climatic data for SDM studies. Using the spatial portal of the Atlas of Living Australia (ALA, https://www.ala.org.au/, Belbin, 2011), a MaxEnt analysis for A. saligna was carried out for the whole world using the six BIOCLIM variables employed by Thompson et al, (2011) (see Figure 3). In contrast to Figure 5 MaxEnt parameter settings and region selection can have important impacts on analysis outputs (Merow et al, 2013), but there is no indication that these could account for the problem described here.…”

“…The analysis of suitable environmental conditions for Australian tree species, both in Australia and overseas, has been a recurrent theme since the first species distribution model (SDM) package became available in 1984 (see sections 2.2 and 3.0 in Booth & Muir, 2020 ). The Higgins et al., ( 2020 ) paper analyzed natural distribution data for 664 Australian eucalypt and acacia species.…”