Paul Caplat, BECC researcher at Lund University, has together with colleagues from universities in the UK, Spain, Canada and Portugal, examined what science has focused on when examining the capacity to survive climate change for wild animals and plants. The results show that research has been too focused on one question, how far they can move. In this way, they have not considered other important ecological characteristics to calculate the probability of different species able to survive climate change.

Paul Caplat and his colleagues believe that the reproduction speed and ability to compete with other species for available resources are a couple of issues that are not sufficiently investigated.

"We have examined a large number of scientific studies within this area and hope that the review will inspire the scientific world to see how one approaches the survival issues of this kind" says Paul Caplat.

The review is published in the scientific journal Trends in Ecology & Evolution.

These findings emerge from collaboration between researchers across Europe working to forecast how European wildlife will respond to climate change, as part of the BiodivERsA network. The authors of the review are from the University of Exeter, UK, the Universidade de Évora, Portugal, the Estación Biológica de Doñana in Sevilla, Spain, McGill University, Montréal, Canada, and Lund University, Sweden.

Contact

Paul Caplat, researcher (English speaking)
Lund University, Centre for Environmental and Climate
046-222 47 42
paul [dot] caplat [at] cec [dot] lu [dot] se