Conservation and climate change
Scientists expect the warmer temperatures and changing patterns of wind and rainfall predicted under climate change to push many species to the brink of existence as it will change the conditions under which they have adapted to live.
But Professor Ary Hoffmann from the University of Melbourne’s Departments of Zoology and Genetics at the Bio21 Institute explains that we have the opportunity to save many of these species threatened by climate change: we just have to make appropriate management decisions.
“An effective way to help species combat the impacts of climate change is to design management programs that protect and sustainably manage important habitats for species,” Professor Hoffmann says.
“In order to protect the critical areas, we need to be able to accurately predict the areas in which species are likely to colonise and adapt under changing conditions.”
Scientists use specially-designed models that incorporate details on how species are expected to respond to any changes in the environment to make these colonisation predictions.
But Professor Hoffmann recently published a paper in Nature, highlighting a significant problem with current biodiversity management programs.
“The problem is that many current management programs might be protecting suboptimal areas because the models that predict the important areas haven’t taken into account all ways populations can respond to climate change,” Professor Hoffmann says.
“Species are expected to respond to climate change in one of three ways. They can move to a favourable habitat, successfully counter stressful conditions by changing behaviour or undergo evolutionary adaptation.
“But current models don’t consider evolution as a possible way for species to respond to climate change because evolution has long been assumed as too slow a process for species to use to respond to rapid climate change.”
Professor Hoffmann says, however, that recent studies have highlighted that evolutionary change can actually be rapid in a number of species, suggesting that evolution could be an important way for populations to counter rapid climate change,
“And predicted colonisation patterns and distribution shifts from the models will therefore be markedly affected by the inclusion of evolution,” he says.
Professor Hoffmann says that to ensure we are protecting the best areas, evolutionary processes need to be incorporated into the management programs designed to minimise biodiversity loss under rapid climate change.
“This could be done by ensuring populations are large enough to maintain adaptive capacity, building corridors of genetic connectivity, and deliberately mixing genes to enhance adaptive capacity.
“Populations will then be more likely to evolve to match the unpredictable effects of climate change.
“There needs to be a large-scale review into our current programs to ensure we are doing the best job possible to protect endangered species.”