Reducing uncertainty in species’ responses to climate change

According to the fifth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia. In the Northern Hemisphere, 1983– 2012 was likely the warmest 30-year period of the last 1,400 years (IPCC 2013). Although some evidence for ecological change associated with recent warming is available from all biomes, general assessments of species’ responses to climate change remain associated with great uncertainty (Parmesan, 2006; Post et al., 2009b). Early efforts to understand how species would respond to climate change were using historical data collected for other reasons than to study the ecological effects of climate change (Primack and Miller-Rushing, 2012; Sparks, 2007). As a consequence, geographical bias remains a pronounced feature of the literature on species responses to climate change. Studies from North America, Europe and Russia are overrepresented and high latitude ecosystems are underrepresented (Hoye et al., 2007; Parmesan, 2006).