Shifts in phenology due to global climate change: the need for a yardstick. (1/1431)

Climate change has led to shifts in phenology in many species distributed widely across taxonomic groups. It is, however, unclear how we should interpret these shifts without some sort of a yardstick: a measure that will reflect how much a species should be shifting to match the change in its environment caused by climate change. Here, we assume that the shift in the phenology of a species' food abundance is, by a first approximation, an appropriate yardstick. We review the few examples that are available, ranging from birds to marine plankton. In almost all of these examples, the phenology of the focal species shifts either too little (five out of 11) or too much (three out of 11) compared to the yardstick. Thus, many species are becoming mistimed due to climate change. We urge researchers with long-term datasets on phenology to link their data with those that may serve as a yardstick, because documentation of the incidence of climate change-induced mistiming is crucial in assessing the impact of global climate change on the natural world.  (+info)

Protistan diversity in the Arctic: a case of paleoclimate shaping modern biodiversity? (2/1431)

BACKGROUND: The impact of climate on biodiversity is indisputable. Climate changes over geological time must have significantly influenced the evolution of biodiversity, ultimately leading to its present pattern. Here we consider the paleoclimate data record, inferring that present-day hot and cold environments should contain, respectively, the largest and the smallest diversity of ancestral lineages of microbial eukaryotes. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We investigate this hypothesis by analyzing an original dataset of 18S rRNA gene sequences from Western Greenland in the Arctic, and data from the existing literature on 18S rRNA gene diversity in hydrothermal vent, temperate sediments, and anoxic water column communities. Unexpectedly, the community from the cold environment emerged as one of the richest observed to date in protistan species, and most diverse in ancestral lineages. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: This pattern is consistent with natural selection sweeps on aerobic non-psychrophilic microbial eukaryotes repeatedly caused by low temperatures and global anoxia of snowball Earth conditions. It implies that cold refuges persisted through the periods of greenhouse conditions, which agrees with some, although not all, current views on the extent of the past global cooling and warming events. We therefore identify cold environments as promising targets for microbial discovery.  (+info)

Cryptic biodiversity in a changing world. (3/1431)

 (+info)

Islands in the sky: the impact of Pleistocene climate cycles on biodiversity. (4/1431)

 (+info)

Exploring the likelihood and mechanism of a climate-change-induced dieback of the Amazon rainforest. (5/1431)

 (+info)

Climate change and respiratory disease: European Respiratory Society position statement. (6/1431)

 (+info)

Australia's dengue risk driven by human adaptation to climate change. (7/1431)

 (+info)

Climate change and sexual size dimorphism in an Arctic spider. (8/1431)

 (+info)