Anthropogenic climate change has been linked to rapid changes in ecological patterns and processes, including species re-distributions and phenological shifts, and is threatening one out of six species with extinction. While most work to date has explored the ecological consequences of gradually rising mean temperatures, the influence of increasingly frequent and intense extreme weather for wildlife species and biodiversity patterns has been largely underexplored but is increasingly becoming appreciated. Many organisms are physiologically constrained by their upper and lower thermal limits and thus may be more likely to be pushed past their physiological limits by an extreme weather event than gradually shifting mean conditions. Species might be especially sensitive to extreme weather at the edges of their geographic ranges, where they are often already living near their physiological limits. Thus, understanding how the incidence of extreme weather events limits the boundaries of species distributions is critical for accurate ecological forecasts and better conservation outcomes under rapidly accelerating climate change. However, the influence of climatic variability and extreme weather is often ignored in favor of climatic means when estimating distributional and richness patterns. Here we use hundreds of millions of citizen science bird observations from 2004-2024 and high-resolution extreme weather risk maps to explore how climatic variability and extreme weather risk alters summer and winter distributions and biodiversity patterns for 540 North American species. We find that species distribution models accounting for historical extreme weather risk performed better at predicting richness and species’ presence or absence across ~250 sites. These models predicted much narrower geographic distributions than traditional models relying on only climatic means, with range truncation observed primarily at the range edges. Additionally, we observed these effects in both seasons, though they were particularly strong in winter. Richness estimates were substantially lower when extreme weather was accounted for, especially in the US southwest and central plains, regions highly prone to extreme heat, cold and drought. Our results suggest that more mechanistically informed biodiversity predictions that account for extreme weather are critical for appreciating and reliably predicting shifting biodiversity distributions.
How to cite: Cohen, J., La Sorte, F., Ellis-Soto, D., Sharma, S., and Jetz, W.: Extreme weather shrinks estimated range boundaries and alters biodiversity predictions, World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-1, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-1, 2026.
Bryophytes, the second most diversified lineage of land plants after the angiosperms, play substantial ecological roles in terms of carbon and nutrient cycles, regulation of soil temperature and moisture, and as a shelter for a large array of micro-organisms. Although, due to peculiar features of their eco-physiology, bryophytes have long been identified as the canaries in the coal mine of climate change, a global assessment of climate change impacts on their distribution and diversity is still missing. Here, we compiled an expert database of more than 2,100,000 occurrences for 1476 (82%) species across Europe to calibrate species distribution models at 100 m resolution and project them to 2071–2100 climate under several scenarios of global warming from the most optimistic to the most pessimistic. Despite large differences among climate change scenarios, all models point to substantially higher median loss (12–91%) than gain (8–18%) of future suitable habitats and median northern shifts of the centroid of species habitat suitability of 65-255km. These general patterns hide contrasting impacts depending on biogeographic regions, with a median loss of 24–100% vs 2–26% of future suitable habitat in Boreo-montane vs Mediterranean regions, respectively. The regions predicted to experience the lowest (less than 10% of variation in habitat suitability) impact of future climate change are distributed along the Atlantic coast, identifying these areas as potential climatic refugia for the bryophyte flora in a warming world. Areas with the highest predicted loss of habitat suitability are concentrated in the mountain regions (Pyrenees, Alps and Tatras) and northern Scandinavia. In turn, the pixels predicted to exhibit the highest increase (more than 50%) in habitat suitability are distributed in mid-western Europe, largely corresponding to the northern shift of climatically suitable areas for Mediterranean species. The cascading effects of a future impoverishment of bryophyte floras on ecosystem functioning in Europe will be discussed.
How to cite: Collart, F. and Hotermans, A. and the Lilliputians consortium: Impacts of climate change on bryophyte distribution: a comprehensive assessment at fine spatial resolution across Europe, World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-123, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-123, 2026.
High-latitude marine ecosystems are particularly exposed to climate change, which transforms habitats and reshapes biological communities. Atlantic generalist consumers are expected to profit from extended ranges of suitable environments and novel trophic interactions, whereas Arctic specialist species are often confronted with habitat loss. Additionally, growing fish stocks may increase the likelihood of industrial fisheries, thereby triggering changes that alter community composition. Here, we employ topological network analysis and dynamic modeling to explore the impacts of climate change and fisheries on the Kongsfjorden, an Arctic fjord ecosystem. We find that the decline of Polar cod (Boreogadus saida), an Arctic endemic species threatened by habitat (sea-ice) loss through warming, indirectly increases the trophic pressure on high trophic-level fishes, piscivore seabirds, and marine mammals, and leads to decreased habitat connectivity. An increase in Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) can partially mitigate the ecological impact on high trophic-level consumers. However, by lengthening food chains, it lowers trophic-transfer efficiency and limits the energy available for piscivore birds. The decline of both cod species, driven by the concomitant action of ocean warming and over-fishing, reduces functional network integrity. It further disrupts the connectivity between benthic and pelagic food webs, thus increasing the vulnerability of pelagic top predators. Our results highlight the importance of adopting a holistic perspective when exploring the indirect impacts of multiple anthropogenic stressors. They indicate that fishing in the Arctic can profoundly modify ecosystem structure, often amplifying the negative consequences of borealization. This work identifies the parts of the Kongsfjorden community that are particularly vulnerable to emerging pressures, providing stakeholders with guidance on conservation priorities.
How to cite: Conradt, J., Golikov, A., Heitmann, L., Niewar, J., Möllmann, C., and Scotti, M.: Future climate change and fisheries reorganize a high Arctic food-web toward benthic and invertebrate dominance, World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-125, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-125, 2026.
Mangroves represent distinctive coastal ecosystems that offer ecological benefits, notably through their high carbon sequestration rates. East Asia is one of the northern distributional limits of global mangroves. While this region contains only a small fraction of the world’s mangrove coverage, its carbon sequestration potential and restoration capacity are highly significant. However, their resilience to extreme climate events remains uncertain, raising concerns about their long-term sustainability under future climate variability.
Here, we investigate the response of mangroves in East Asia to climate variability by employing the remote-sensing derived normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) as a proxy for mangrove health, considering both simultaneous and time-lagged effects. We found East Asian mangrove growth has positive relations with temperature and solar radiation, particularly in cumulative anomalies on seasonal time scales. For example, winter temperature influences subsequent spring growth, and solar radiation around the summer–autumn transition affects mangrove growth during the autumn period.
These findings are extrapolated to future projections by the Earth system modelling to explore not only existing mangroves but also potential habitats. Compared with scenarios SSP1-2.6, SSP3-7.0 shows higher temperatures but lower solar radiation toward the end of the century, mainly due to stronger aerosol emissions under the fossil-fuel-dominated scenarios. While shifts in wintertime isotherms indicate northward expansion of mangroves under global warming, low solar radiation events associated with aerosol emissions in East Asia could remain a limiting factor for their growth, especially in SSP3-7.0.
This study underscores the importance of climate extremes in practical planning for future mangrove conservation, restoration, and migration, which are considered effective nature-based climate solutions. Our results indicate that while rising temperatures may facilitate mangrove expansion and enhanced productivity, growth may still be hindered by episodic reductions in solar radiation if anthropogenic drivers of climate change remain unmitigated. Balancing these opportunities and risks will require integrated, multidisciplinary approaches that account for both anthropogenic and natural climate dynamics.
How to cite: Chen, R., Kim, J.-S., Chu, J.-E., Kim, H.-J., Lee, B., Jeong, S., and Schaepman-Strub, G.: Climate extremes limiting the growth of East Asian mangroves for future nature-based solutions, World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-443, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-443, 2026.
Crossing global climate tipping points (that is, the persistent collapse of climate subsystems like the melting of ice sheets or the modification of ocean circulation patterns) are expected to have dramatic effects on ecosystems worldwide. One such dramatic effect is the potential exposure of species to stressful climatic conditions outside their physiological limits without time for adaptation, increasing their risk of extinction. However, the extent to which climate tipping points may expose species outside the climatic limits of their existence (i.e. their climate niche) remains an open question.
In this study, we estimate the risk of extinction to projected climate tipping points for worldwide terrestrial biodiversity. We do this by first evaluating the historical realized climate niche for 80967 terrestrial and freshwater populations, representing 54850 species. We define the realised climate niche as the boundaries in historical climatic conditions experienced by each species from 1940-2020 that we quantify in 15 dimensions related to temperature, rainfall, climate variability, and extreme events (heatwaves, cold spells, and droughts).
We then use novel and unique global climate projections that simulate two highly likely climate tipping points, the removal of the Amazon rainforest and the shutdown of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), to investigate the extent of exposure in different climate dimensions for worldwide biodiversity. Defining exposure as when species experience conditions above the historical threshold for a prolonged period in each of the 15 climate dimensions, we explore how habitat suitability is affected in different dimensions for different species, identifying potential climate refugia, and dimensions of maximum exposure for different taxa and regions that we translate to a measure of species extinction risk. We find that biodiversity exposure and potential extinction risk arising from the loss of the Amazon rainforest is highly localized to the Amazon; while the AMOC shutdown scenario has much greater global impact, its typical effect is global cooling, stymieing large-scale biodiversity exposure.
Our results suggest that we might underestimate the impact of future climate change if we do not account for the possibility of long-lasting and irreversible climate tipping point events.
How to cite: Girish, K., Dakos, V., and Jacquet, C.: Assessing the impacts of climate tipping points on global biodiversity, World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-479, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-479, 2026.
The way in which climate change is experienced by species will be highly variable, due both to the spatial and temporal heterogeneity of climate change as well as differences in species’ sensitivity to such changes. While previous methods for addressing variation in climate exposure have considered metrics of climate change speed or direction (e.g., climate velocity), these metrics do not account for historical climate variability. Species have evolved to accommodate historical variability in climate, and we expect range shifts to be more likely in areas where anthropogenic climate change exceeds the bounds of unforced climate variability. We assessed the historical relationship between climatic variability, the strength of the anthropogenic climate change signal, and observed terrestrial latitudinal species range shifts. We accounted for directional change in climate variables (signal) relative to natural variability (noise) using signal to noise ratios (SNR) for ecologically relevant temperature metrics and used linear regression to understand the relationship between SNR and observed species range shifts. We also looked at projected mid-century SNRs calculated from a large ensemble Global Climate Model to identify places where strong SNRs may emerge and where we may therefore anticipate significant range shifts. We found that as the climate becomes increasingly different from historical climate averages (i.e., as SNR increases) species shift faster on latitudinal leading edges. This is true independent of the magnitude of temperature change. The effects of SNR are more variable on trailing edges and within species ranges. Most range shift studies to date have taken place in North America and Europe, which are not the places that have experienced the highest SNR. While SNR is projected to increase globally by mid-century, increases will be highest in tropical areas. These areas might therefore be hotspots of future range shifts. It is important to consider historical variability experienced by the species in addition to absolute temperature change, especially for latitudinal leading edges. We discuss implications for studying future range shifts and range shift management.
How to cite: Weiskopf, S., Bowden, J., Rubenstein, M., Terando, A., and Arce-Plata, M. I.: Species latitudinal range shifts are tracking high climate change signal-to-noise ratios , World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-515, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-515, 2026.
Changes in climatic conditions affect plants as well as their consumers and thereby reshape the strength and outcome of biotic interactions. Furthermore, climate change may also create novel interactions between plants, herbivores, and pathogens as species shift their latitudinal or elevational ranges at different rates. These novel-plant-consumer interactions remain largely unstudied but likely have consequences for plant populations, community dynamics, and ecosystem functioning. Particularly in alpine ecosystems, where climatic conditions vary strongly due to steep environmental gradients.
In order to address this knowledge gap, we conducted a large-scale transplant experiment with nine focal alpine plant species across an elevational gradient. The species were selected based on their growth strategy as well as their altitudinal distribution range, including low and high-elevation species, as well as herbs, grasses, and legumes. We planted our focal species in higher, lower, or home elevations to expose them to different consumer communities and to simulate current and future climates in the European Alps over the next century. By combining these transplants with insect, mollusk, and pathogen exclusion experiments, we isolate and disentangle the impacts of home and novel consumer groups on plant fitness. Additionally, we conducted vegetation surveys of the surrounding plant community to assess the effects of diversity and community composition on consumer impacts.
We hypothesize that low-elevation consumers, which are accustomed to warmer and more productive systems, will exert stronger negative effects on plants than high-elevation consumers. Further, we anticipate high-elevation plant species to be more negatively affected by low-elevation consumers. When focal plants are grown in communities, we expect consumer effects to vary with similarity of phytometer and community growth strategy, and that disregarding these interactions could underestimate climate change impacts.
Here, we present first results from this experiment, providing new insights into the role of biotic interactions in shaping alpine plant responses to warming. Furthermore, we show how neighboring community growth strategy and biodiversity modify consumer effects on focal species. Our research will improve predictions of alpine community dynamics under future climate scenarios.
How to cite: Freund, S., Bota, J., Allan, E., and Kempel, A.: Novel Consumer Impacts on Alpine Grassland Plants Across Elevational Gradients, World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-762, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-762, 2026.
Anthropogenic climate change poses a threat to ecosystems and the biodiversity they host. This threat will only become more severe as global temperatures continue to rise. Few studies about biodiversity responses to climate change attempted global assessments, and those that did were often limited in spatial detail. Moreover, previous research mostly focussed on species richness, disregarding biodiversity’s multidimensional character and providing only a loose link to ecosystem functioning. In addition, terrestrial ecosystems generally receive the most attention in research, whereas especially marine ecosystems are comparatively neglected.
To fill these gaps, we assessed climate change effects on the global functional diversity of terrestrial, freshwater, and marine ecosystems at the grid-cell level. Climate change at various warming levels reflected changes in thermal and hydrological conditions, going beyond climate averages. Functional richness, evenness, and divergence captured three complementary facets of functional diversity. Terrestrial ecosystems were represented by amphibians (7,727 species), and freshwater and marine ecosystems by fish (11,425 and 4,150 species), with some of their trait values being imputed. Two dispersal assumptions allowed either no dispersal (i.e., only range contractions and extirpations) or maximum dispersal within certain boundaries (i.e., also range expansions and colonizations).
Functional diversity responses to climate change exhibited strong spatial variation. Hotspots in which the full trait space was affected occurred especially in India for terrestrial ecosystems, in the Amazon River basin for freshwater ecosystems, and in the Coral Triangle for marine ecosystems. The three functional diversity facets showed contrasting patterns. In regions with biodiversity changes, functional richness almost always declined, while functional evenness and divergence sometimes increased. Only amphibians also experienced gains in functional richness in some locations when assuming maximum dispersal. Although changes in phenology and behaviour of species as means of climate change adaptation have not been considered in this study, it still provides a clearer picture of global functional diversity patterns under current conditions and future climate scenarios, which can support conservation strategies aiming at biodiversity preservation.
How to cite: Scherer, L., Anderson, J., and van Bodegom, P. M.: Climate change driving global shifts in functional diversity patterns, World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-763, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-763, 2026.
