Tropical diversity countdown

摘要

Rather than emphasizing general projections of expected temperature increases over the next century, Mora et al. focus on estimating precisely when continuous deviation from mean climatic conditions that have prevailed over the past century and a half is likely to occur. Putting numbers on their 'timing of climate departure' may prove a tricky business because detractors will surely concentrate on the precise estimates of years of departure so derived. But the approach provides an important complement to the estimation of climate-change velocities, and, when applied regionally, may have implications for understanding the role of climate change in biodiversity loss. As all ecologists know, the increase in species diversity from the poles to the tropics is matched by increases in temperature and precipitation, and by a decline in seasonal variation in climate. However, the importance of climate history and climatic gradients in the generation of diversity gradients remains obscure, despite improvements in model complexity.