Drivers of change in the realised climatic niche of terrestrial mammals

The breadth of a species’ climatic niche is an important ecological trait that allows adaptation to climate change, but human activities often reduce realised niche breadth by impacting species distributions. Some life-history traits, such as dispersal ability and reproductive speed, allow species to cope with both human impact and climate change. But how do these traits interact with human pressure to determine niche change? Here we investigate the patterns and drivers of change in the realised climatic niche of 258 terrestrial mammal species. Our goal is to disentangle the impacts of human land use, climate change, and life history. We quantified the past and present climatic niches of each species by considering past climatic conditions (Mid Holocene) within their pre-human impact distributions, and current climatic conditions within the current distributions. Depending on the difference between past and current niche, we defined four categories of change: “shrink”, “shift”, “stable”...

物种气候生态位（climatic niche）的广度是影响物种适应气候变化的重要生态特征，但人类活动往往通过干扰物种分布范围，压缩物种的实际生态位（realised niche）广度。部分生活史特征（life-history traits），如扩散能力、繁殖速率，可帮助物种应对人类影响与气候变化。但这些特征如何与人类活动压力相互作用，进而决定生态位的变化？
本研究针对258种陆生哺乳动物的实际气候生态位（realised climatic niche）变化模式与驱动因子展开探究，旨在厘清人类土地利用、气候变化以及生活史特征三者的影响效应。我们通过分别考量物种人类活动前分布范围内的古气候条件（中全新世（Mid Holocene））与当前分布范围内的现代气候条件，量化了各物种的古、今气候生态位。基于古、今生态位的差异，我们将生态位变化划分为四类："收缩（shrink）"、"偏移（shift）"、"稳定（stable）"……