The broad footprint of climate change from genes to biomes to people

BR Scheffers; L De Meester; TCL Bridge; AA Hoffmann; JM Pandolfi; RT Corlett; SHM Butchart; P Pearce-Kelly; KM Kovacs; D Dudgeon; M Pacifici; C Rondinini; WB Foden; TG Martin; C Mora; D Bickford; JEM Watson

Journal article

The broad footprint of climate change from genes to biomes to people

BR Scheffers, L De Meester, TCL Bridge, AA Hoffmann, JM Pandolfi, RT Corlett, SHM Butchart, P Pearce-Kelly, KM Kovacs, D Dudgeon, M Pacifici, C Rondinini, WB Foden, TG Martin, C Mora, D Bickford, JEM Watson

Science (New York, N.Y.) | AMER ASSOC ADVANCEMENT SCIENCE | Published : 2016

DOI: 10.1126/science.aaf7671

Abstract

Copyright © 2016, American Association for the Advancement of Science. Most ecological processes now show responses to anthropogenic climate change. In terrestrial, freshwater, and marine ecosystems, species are changing genetically, physiologically, morphologically, and phenologically and are shifting their distributions, which affects food webs and results in new interactions. Disruptions scale from the gene to the ecosystem and have documented consequences for people, including unpredictable fisheries and crop yields, loss of genetic diversity in wild crop varieties, and increasing impacts of pests and diseases. In addition to the more easily observed changes, such as shifts in flowering ..

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University of Melbourne Researchers

Ary Hoffmann Author

Grants

Awarded by National Science Foundation

Funding Acknowledgements

We thank the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, and the thousands of researchers that have studied biodiversity and ecosystem services and the impacts of climate change on Earth-many of whom we were not able to cite because of length restrictions of the journal. S. Greenspan, J. Greenspan, and E. Perry provided helpful discussion and feedback on this manuscript. S. Jones and M. Wood were instrumental in figure creation. L.D.M. acknowledges KU Leuven Research Fund PF/2010/07 and Future Earth core project BioGENESIS. We thank the International Union for Conservation of Nature Climate Change Specialist Group for collaborative discussions on climate change themes and impacts on conservation of species and ecosystems and three anonymous reviewers for constructive suggestions that improved our manuscript.