Extended phenotypes: buffers or amplifiers of climate change?
Abstract
Historic approaches to understanding biological responses to climate change have viewed climate as something external that happens to organisms. Organisms, however, at least partially influence their own climate experience by moving within local mosaics of microclimates. Such behaviors are increasingly being incorporated into models of species distributions and climate sensitivity. Less attention has focused on how organisms alter microclimates via extended phenotypes: phenotypes that extend beyond the organismal surface, including structures that are induced or built. We argue that predicting the consequences of climate change for organismal performance and fitness will depend on understanding the expression and consequences of extended phenotypes, the microclimatic niches they generate, and the power of plasticity and evolution to shape those niches.
Read the paper
Related studies
- Climate Change Impacts on Marine Ecosystems
- Assisted Gene Flow to Facilitate Local Adaptation to Climate Change
- Climate Change Effects on Plant Disease: Genomes to Ecosystems
- Biodiversity and Climate Change: Integrating Evolutionary and Ecological Responses of Species and Communities
- A systematic review of climate change education: giving children and young people a ‘voice’ and a ‘hand’ in redressing climate change
- Global Monsoon Dynamics and Climate Change
Go deeper in Evidence Hub
Evidence Hub adds a study data sheet (design, sample size, evidence level, key numbers), an AI summary and a chat grounded in the paper's text.