Year: 2005
Type: article
Abstract: The degree to which species ’ distributions are at equili-brium with current climate is an important issue in the ecological literature (Davis 1986, Gaston 2003). Distin-guishing the relative roles of present and past climates in determining species ’ distributions is not only of theore-tical interest, but is key to understanding responses of species to climate change. Recent work has demon-strated significant departures from equilibrium with current climate for tree distributions in Europe (Sven-ning and Skov 2004), yet differences in the degree of equilibrium can be expected across organisms whose dispersal abilities (and hence ability to track changing climate conditions) vary greatly. Here we assess differ-ences in equilibrium between present-day climate and vascular plant, breeding bird, amphibian and reptile assemblages in Europe. Our analyses included all know European species of breeding birds (Hagemeijer and Blair 1997), amphibians and reptiles (Gasc et al. 1997), and ca 20 % of the European vascular flora (Jalas and
Source: Ecography
Authors: Miguel B. Araújo, Richard G. Pearson
Institutions: University of Évora, University of Oxford
Language: English
Subfield: Ecological Modeling
Field: Environmental Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
SDG: Life on land
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W1996364967