Opening the climate change forecasting toolbox

Date:
August 20, 2021
Source:
Stellenbosch University
Summary:
It is not easy to predict how animals -- from insects to
fish -- are going to respond to climate change and especially
extremes of temperature. This lack of understanding hinders our
ability to predict the vulnerability of these animals to climate
change. Scientists now make several proposal on how to improve
the current, widely adopted thermal vulnerability index.



FULL STORY ==========================================================================
It is not easy to predict how animals -- from insects to fish -- are going
to respond to climate change and especially extremes of temperature. This
lack of understanding hinders our ability to predict the vulnerability
of these animals to climate change.


==========================================================================
"We need to continuously improve our ability to predict and mitigate the effects of climate change. One of the ways we can do this is by gaining
a better understanding of how animals respond to climate change, and incorporating any relevant information into risk metrics," says Dr. Susana Clusella-Trullas, a climate change scientist in the Department of Botany
and Zoology at Stellenbosch University (SU).

She leads a team of scientists from SU and the University of Melbourne in Australia, and together they have made several proposals on how to improve
the current, widely adopted thermal vulnerability index in a recent
publication in the high profile journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution.

She says that forecasting the vulnerability of species to climate change requires the right tools for the job and knowing which tools to apply
in a specific situation is a challenging enterprise.

The current vulnerability indices are based on the direct influence of
climate variables, mostly temperature, on the performance of organisms:
"They measure the extent to which performance limits, such as the
temperatures at which locomotion or growth can no longer be sustained,
are likely to be approached or exceeded with climate warming. Managers
and practitioners need to be able to quickly grasp the potential pros and
cons of the main approaches to inferring climate change risks. With the
right tools and indices of climate change vulnerability, this will allow
them to make better decisions, mitigate undesirable impacts, and plan accordingly for the conservation of threatened species," she explains.

Yet there remains great debate and little consensus on how best to go
about achieving this and the diverse array of metrics and approaches
available can be overwhelming. Knowing which tools to select, when to use
them and what interpretations can be made, is not straightforward and can
lead to confusion in the scientific literature, which in turn trickles
back to public uncertainty and slows down effective policy-making.

The team of authors argue that there are many implicit and often untested biases in current thermal indices designed to measure climate change vulnerability. These biases extend across how the thermal landscape is characterised to quantify environmental stress experienced by animals
and how they respond, from a behavioural or physiological viewpoint,
to more frequent and severe warming.

"It is very hard to devise a test of vulnerability in a laboratory
test tube that accurately reflects what happens in nature where animals
can adapt to a stress," says Prof Ary Hoffmann from the University of Melbourne. "Yet we often make conclusions about vulnerability based on
such assessments." Their paper further goes on to describe approaches
to validate vulnerability index applications and discusses key issues
to be considered in further developing these indices.

========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by Stellenbosch_University. Note:
Content may be edited for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Susana Clusella-Trullas, Raquel A. Garcia, John S. Terblanche,
Ary A.

Hoffmann. How useful are thermal vulnerability indices? Trends in
Ecology & Evolution, 2021; DOI: 10.1016/j.tree.2021.07.001 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/08/210820093409.htm

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