Climate change is an important predictor of extinction risk on macroevolutionary timescales

Anthropogenic climate change is increasing rapidly and already impacting
biodiversity. Despite the importance for future projections, understanding
of the underlying mechanisms by which climate mediates extinction remains
limited. We present an integrated approach examining the role of intrinsic
traits vs. extrinsic climate change in mediating extinction risk for
marine invertebrates over the past 485 million years. We found that a
combination of physiological traits and the magnitude of climate change
are necessary to explain marine invertebrate extinction patterns. Our
results suggest that taxa previously identified as extinction resistant
may still succumb to extinction if the magnitude of climate change is
great enough.