Show simple item record

dc.contributor.authorGardner, AS
dc.contributor.authorGaston, KJ
dc.contributor.authorMaclean, IMD
dc.date.accessioned2021-06-02T09:57:28Z
dc.date.issued2021-05-07
dc.description.abstractAim: Species respond to environmental conditions and so reliable assessments of climate suitability are important for predicting how climate change could alter their distributions. Long-term average climate data are often used to evaluate the climate suitability of an area, but in these aggregated climate datasets, inter-annual variability is lost. Due to non-linearity in species’ biological responses to climate, estimates of long-term climate suitability from average climate data may be biased and so differ from estimates derived from the average annual suitability over the same period (average response). We investigate the extent to which such differences manifest in a regional assessment of climate suitability for 255 plant species across two 17-year time periods. Location: Cornwall in South-West England provides a case study. Taxon: Plantae. Methods: We run a simple mechanistic climate suitability model and derive quantitative estimates of climate suitability for 1984–2000 and 2001–2017. For each period, we run the model using climate data representing average monthly values for that period. We then run the model for each year using monthly climate data for that year and average the annual suitability scores across each period (average response). We compare estimates of climate suitability from these two approaches. Results: Average climate data gave higher estimates of suitability than the average response, suggesting bias against years of poor suitability in temporally aggregated climate datasets. Differences between suitability estimates were larger in areas of high climate variability and correlated with species’ environmental requirements, being larger for species with small thermal niches and narrow ranges of precipitation tolerance. Main Conclusions: Incorporating inter-annual variability into climate suitability assessments or understanding the extent to which average climate data might obscure this variance will be important to predict reliably the impacts of climate change on species distributions and should be considered when using mechanistic species distribution models.en_GB
dc.description.sponsorshipCornwall Councilen_GB
dc.description.sponsorshipNatural Environment Research Councilen_GB
dc.identifier.citationPublished online 7 May 2021en_GB
dc.identifier.doi10.1111/jbi.14125
dc.identifier.grantnumberNE/P01229/1en_GB
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10871/125912
dc.language.isoenen_GB
dc.publisherWileyen_GB
dc.rights© 2021 The Authors. Journal of Biogeography published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.en_GB
dc.subjectclimate changeen_GB
dc.subjectclimate suitability modelen_GB
dc.subjectclimate variabilityen_GB
dc.subjectecocrop modelen_GB
dc.subjectspecies distribution modelen_GB
dc.subjecttemporal aggregationen_GB
dc.titleAccounting for inter-annual variability alters long-term estimates of climate suitabilityen_GB
dc.typeArticleen_GB
dc.date.available2021-06-02T09:57:28Z
dc.identifier.issn0305-0270
dc.descriptionThis is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Wiley via the DOI in this record en_GB
dc.identifier.eissn1365-2699
dc.identifier.journalJournal of Biogeographyen_GB
dc.rights.urihttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/en_GB
dcterms.dateAccepted2021
exeter.funder::Cornwall Councilen_GB
rioxxterms.versionAMen_GB
rioxxterms.licenseref.startdate2021-05-07
rioxxterms.typeJournal Article/Reviewen_GB
refterms.dateFCD2021-06-02T09:53:41Z
refterms.versionFCDAM
refterms.dateFOA2021-06-02T09:57:38Z
refterms.panelAen_GB


Files in this item

This item appears in the following Collection(s)

Show simple item record

© 2021 The Authors. Journal of Biogeography published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Except where otherwise noted, this item's licence is described as © 2021 The Authors. Journal of Biogeography published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.