04. The paleo-ecological perspective: reconstructing species distributions over multiple millennia

Dr Kasper Thorup1 1University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark Birds and many other animals move in response to seasonal resource availability. Some of the longest-distance Afro-Palearctic migrants perform surprisingly complex spatiotemporal schedules apparently fine-tuned to current seasonal availability of resources. It is still an open question how migratory species with highly complex programmes have responded to…

Dr Daniel Rosauer1 1Australian National University, Canberra, Australia Macro-ecological process models are showing great potential to increase understanding of the interacting processes of historical climate, geography and evolution have shaped the spatial distribution of biodiversity. When simulating expected biodiversity, a relatively simple set of parameters can shed light on the complex dynamics of moving species…

Prof John Pandolfi1, Dr Sun Kim1, Professor Wolfgang Kiessling2 1The University of Queensland, St Lucia, Australia, 2Universität Erlangen−Nürnberg, Erlangen, Germany Global warming has the potential to affect a large number of species distributions throughout the world. However, subsets of species show varying propensity for range contractions, expansions or both. Previous work established that reef coral…

Dr Sophie Monsarrat1,2, Professor Graham Kerley2 1Center For Biodiversity Dynamics In A Changing World (BIOCHANGE), Department Of Bioscience, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark, 2Centre for African Conservation Ecology, Nelson Mandela University, Port Elizabeth, South Africa Humans have driven biodiversity loss and modified ecosystem structure for millennia. Using modern ecological data therefore has the risk of considerably…

Dr Stephen Jackson1 1Southwest Climate Adaptation Science Center, USGS, Tucson, United States, 2Department of Geosciences, University of Arizona, Tucson, United States Paleoecological studies reveal how abundance and distribution of tree species are governed by interactions of slow and fast ecological processes in a changing environment.  Holocene migrations of several North American species (Juniperus osteosperma, Pinus…

A/Prof Damien  Fordham1, Dr Stuart Brown1, A/Prof David Nogues-Bravo2 1The Environment Institute and School of Biological Sciences, The University of Adelaide, Adelaide, Australia, 2Center for Macroecology, Evolution and Climate, Natural History Museum of Denmark, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark Disentangling climate from non-climate impacts on species’ range shifts has proved difficult using correlative approaches, because…

Dr Regan Early1, Dr Dana Blumenthal, Dr Cascade Sorte, Ms Evelyn Beaury, Professor Deborah Goldberg 1University Of Exeter, Penryn, United Kingdom Very little is known about how species shifting their geographic ranges will integrate with, or respond to, the ecological communities they encounter. Will ‘climate migrants’ behave like invasive species introduced between biogeographic regions in…

Dr. Robert K. Colwell1,2,3,4, Dr. Thiago F.  Rangel3, Dr. Neil R. Edwards5, Dr. Phillip B. Holden5, Dr. José Alexandre F.  Diniz-Filho3, Dr.  William D. Gosling5,6, Dr. Carsten Rahbek4,7 1Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Connecticut, Storrs, United States of America, 2University of Colorado Museum of Natural History, Boulder, United States of America, 3Departamento…

Prof Barry Brook1, Dr Jessie Buettel1 1University Of Tasmania, Hobart, Australia Prior to European colonization in the early 1800s, Tasmania supported a small but stable population of the cursorial predatory thylacine (Thylacinus cynocephalus). This ‘marsupial wolf’, often called the ‘Tasmanian tiger’, had been extirpated from mainland Australia during the mid-Holocene, after surviving the earlier wave…