Shape of species climate performance curves affects community response to climate change

Understanding how community composition is reshaped by changing climate is
important for interpreting and predicting patterns of community assembly
through time or across space. Community composition often does not
perfectly correspond to expectations from current environmental
conditions, leading to community-climate mismatches. Here, we combine data
analysis and theory development to explore how species climate response
curves affect the community response to climate change. We show that
strong mismatches between community and climate can appear in the absence
of demographic delays or limited species pools. Communities simulated
using species response curves showed temporal changes of similar magnitude
to those observed in natural communities of fishes and plankton,
suggesting no overall delays in community change despite substantial
unexplained variation from community assembly and other processes. Our
approach can be considered as a null model that will be important to use
when interpreting observed community responses to climate change and
variability.