2016/12/05 by Lesley T. Lancaster, Gavin Morrison, Robert N. L. Fitt · 135 citations
Agricultural and Biological Sciences · Environmental Science · Social Sciences · #Animal Behavior and Reproduction #Biology #Climate change #Competition (biology) #Ecology #Economic geography #Economics #Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation #Intensity (physics) #Natural resource economics #Physics #Species Distribution and Climate Change
paper · open access · doi:10.1098/rstb.2016.0046
published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences 372(1712), 20160046 (Royal Society)
openalex publication_date 2016/12/05 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/04
The consequences of climate change for local biodiversity are little understood in process or mechanism, but these changes are likely to reflect both changing regional species pools and changing competitive interactions. Previous empirical work largely supports the idea that competition will intensify under climate change, promoting competitive exclusions and local extinctions, while theory and conceptual work indicate that relaxed competition may in fact buffer communities from biodiversity losses that are typically witnessed at broader spatial scales. In this review, we apply life history theory to understand the conditions under which these alternative scenarios may play out in the context of a range-shifting biota undergoing rapid evolutionary and environmental change, and at both leading-edge and trailing-edge communities. We conclude that, in general, warming temperatures are likely to reduce life history variation among competitors, intensifying competition in both established and novel communities. However, longer growing seasons, severe environmental stress and increased climatic variability associated with climate change may buffer these communities against intensified competition. The role of life history plasticity and evolution has been previously underappreciated in community ecology, but may hold the key to understanding changing species interactions and local biodiversity under changing climates.This article is part of the themed issue 'Human influences on evolution, and the ecological and societal consequences'.