Life on the edge: A new toolbox for population-level climate change vulnerability assessments

Research output: Contribution to journalResearch articleContributedpeer-review

Contributors

  • Christopher D. Barratt - , German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle—Jena—Leipzig, Leipzig University, Naturalis Biodiversity Center, Wageningen University & Research (WUR) (Author)
  • Renske E. Onstein - , German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle—Jena—Leipzig, Naturalis Biodiversity Center (Author)
  • Malin L. Pinsky - , Rutgers - The State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick, University of California at Santa Cruz (Author)
  • Sebastian Steinfartz - , Leipzig University (Author)
  • Hjalmar S. Kühl - , Chair of Mammalian Diversity, Senckenberg Gesellschaft für Naturforschung (Author)
  • Brenna R. Forester - , United States Fish & Wildlife Service (Author)
  • Orly Razgour - , University of Exeter (Author)

Abstract

Global change is impacting biodiversity across all habitats on earth. New selection pressures from changing climatic conditions and other anthropogenic activities are creating heterogeneous ecological and evolutionary responses across many species' geographic ranges. Yet we currently lack standardised and reproducible tools to effectively predict the resulting patterns in species vulnerability to declines or range changes. We developed an informatic toolbox that integrates ecological, environmental and genomic data and analyses (environmental dissimilarity, species distribution models, landscape connectivity, neutral and adaptive genetic diversity, genotype-environment associations and genomic offset) to estimate population vulnerability. In our toolbox, functions and data structures are coded in a standardised way so that it is applicable to any species or geographic region where appropriate data are available, for example individual or population sampling and genomic datasets (e.g. RAD-seq, ddRAD-seq, whole genome sequencing data) representing environmental variation across the species geographic range. To demonstrate multi-species applicability, we apply our toolbox to three georeferenced genomic datasets for co-occurring East African spiny reed frogs (Afrixalus fornasini, A. delicatus and A. sylvaticus) to predict their population vulnerability, as well as demonstrating that range loss projections based on adaptive variation can be accurately reproduced from a previous study using data for two European bat species (Myotis escalerai and M. crypticus). Our framework sets the stage for large scale, multi-species genomic datasets to be leveraged in a novel climate change vulnerability framework to quantify intraspecific differences in genetic diversity, local adaptation, range shifts and population vulnerability based on exposure, sensitivity and landscape barriers.

Details

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)2038-2058
Number of pages21
JournalMethods in Ecology and Evolution
Volume15
Issue number11
Publication statusPublished - Nov 2024
Peer-reviewedYes

Keywords

Sustainable Development Goals

Keywords

  • adaptation, circuit theory, climate change vulnerability assessment, conservation, genomics, global change, informatics, predictive modelling