Data from: Climate change is projected to outpace rates of niche change in grasses

Climate change may soon threaten much of global biodiversity, especially if species cannot adapt to changing climatic conditions quickly enough. A critical question is how quickly climatic niches change, and if this speed is sufficient to prevent extinction as climates warm. Here we address this question in the grass family (Poaceae). Grasses are fundamental to one of Earth’s most widespread biomes (grasslands), and provide roughly half of all calories consumed by humans (including wheat, rice, corn, and sorghum). We estimate rates of climatic niche change in 236 species and compare these to rates of projected climate change by 2070. Our results show that projected climate change is consistently faster than rates of niche change in grasses, typically by >5,000 fold for temperature-related variables. Although these results do not show directly what will happen under global warming, they have troubling implications for a major biome and for human food resources.