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 with 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 more than 5000-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.气候变化或将很快对全球绝大多数生物多样性构成威胁，若物种无法足够迅速地适应不断变化的气候条件，这一威胁将更为突出。核心问题在于，气候生态位（climatic niche）的变化速率究竟如何，以及该速率是否足以在气候变暖的背景下阻止物种灭绝。本研究以禾本科（Poaceae）植物为对象探讨该问题。草本植物支撑着地球上分布最广的生物群系之一——草原，同时为人类提供了约半数的摄入热量，涵盖小麦、水稻、玉米与高粱等作物。我们对236个物种的气候生态位变化速率进行了估算，并将其与到2070年的预估气候变化速率进行对比。研究结果显示，预估的气候变化速率始终快于草本植物的生态位变化速率，就温度相关变量而言，二者的差距通常可达5000倍以上。尽管本研究结果并未直接揭示全球变暖下的具体走向，但它们对这一重要生物群系以及人类粮食资源均存在令人担忧的潜在影响。