Publication
Quantifying climate sensitivity and climate-driven change in North American amphibian communities
Publisher:
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date:
25-07-2017
DOI:
10.1038/S41467-018-06157-6
Abstract: Changing climate will impact species’ ranges only when environmental variability directly impacts the demography of local populations. However, measurement of demographic responses to climate change has largely been limited to single species and locations. Here we show that hibian communities are responsive to climatic variability, using ,000 time-series observations for 81 species across 86 North American study areas. The effect of climate on local colonization and persistence probabilities varies among eco-regions and depends on local climate, species life-histories, and taxonomic classification. We found that local species richness is most sensitive to changes in water availability during breeding and changes in winter conditions. Based on the relationships we measure, recent changes in climate cannot explain why local species richness of North American hibians has rapidly declined. However, changing climate does explain why some populations are declining faster than others. Our results provide important insights into how hibians respond to climate and a general framework for measuring climate impacts on species richness.