Quantifying climate sensitivity and climate-driven change in North American amphibian communities

Changing climate will impact species’ ranges only when environmental variability directly impacts the demography of local populations. However, measurement of demographic responses to climate change has largely been limited to single species and locations. Here we show that amphibian communities are responsive to climatic variability, using >500,000 time-series observations for 81 species across 86 North American study areas. The effect of climate on local colonization and persistence probabilities varies among eco-regions and depends on local climate, species life-histories, and taxonomic classification. We found that local species richness is most sensitive to changes in water availability during breeding and changes in winter conditions. Based on the relationships we measure, recent changes in climate cannot explain why local species richness of North American amphibians has rapidly declined. However, changing climate does explain why some populations are declining faster than oth...

仅当环境变异性直接影响局域种群的种群统计特征时，气候变化才会对物种分布范围产生影响。然而，此前针对气候变化的种群统计响应研究，大多仅局限于单一物种与单一研究区域。本研究基于北美86个研究区域内81个物种的超50万条时间序列观测数据，证实两栖动物群落对气候变异性存在响应。气候对局域拓殖概率与存续概率的影响因生态区域而异，且取决于局域气候、物种生活史以及分类学类别。研究发现，局域物种丰富度对繁殖期水分可利用性变化以及冬季气候条件变化最为敏感。基于本研究得到的相关关系，近期的气候变化无法解释北美两栖动物局域物种丰富度为何会快速下降。但气候变化确实能够解释为何部分两栖动物种群的衰退速度快于其他种群。