Data from: Matching habitat choice promotes species persistence under climate change

Species may survive under contemporary climate change by either shifting
their range or adapting locally to the warmer conditions. Theoretical and
empirical studies recently underlined that dispersal, the central
mechanism behind these responses, may depend on the match between an
individuals’ phenotype and local environment. Such matching habitat choice
is expected to induce an adaptive gene flow, but it now remains to be
studied whether this local process could promote species’ responses to
climate change. Here, we investigate this by developing an
individual-based model including either random dispersal or
temperature-dependent matching habitat choice. We monitored population
composition and distribution through space and time under climate change.
Relative to random dispersal, matching habitat choice induced an adaptive
gene flow that lessened spatial range loss during climate warming by
improving populations' viability within the range (i.e. limiting
range fragmentation) and by facilitating colonization of new habitats at
the cold margin. The model even predicted in some cases range contraction
under random dispersal but range expansion under optimal matching habitat
choice. These benefits of matching habitat choice for population
persistence mostly resulted from adaptive immigration decision and were
greater for populations with larger dispersal distance and higher
emigration probability. We also found that environmental stochasticity
resulted in suboptimal matching habitat choice, decreasing the benefits of
this dispersal mode under climate change. However population persistence
was still better under suboptimal matching habitat choice than under
random dispersal. Our results highlight the urgent need to implement more
realistic mechanisms of dispersal such as matching habitat choice into
models predicting the impacts of ongoing climate change on biodiversity.