Can we really predict how species will respond to contemporary climate warming? Finding rainforest birds with a thermometer and rain gauge.

Date:

Tuesday 13 May 2008

Time:

12:00 – 1:00pm

Location:

Townsville- DA009-002 -(Known as HY002 to most) and CairnsA21.002

Presenter:

Dr. Luke Shoo, Postdoctoral Research Fellow

Abstract:

A critical question in global change biology is whether models that successfully predict current species’ distributions will provide meaningful predictions of species’ distributions under future climate change? The obvious hurdle for evaluating model performance under climate change is that there are no data against which predictions of future ranges can be tested. One way to overcome this problem is to test models through “space-for-time” substitution. That is, distribution models can be trained in one region and used to predict distribution in another region. The extent to which predictions match reality is then an explicit test of the ‘transferability’ of the model. In the Australian Wet Tropics, model algorithms of species-climate relationships have already been employed to predict impacts of contemporary climate change on the unique, endemic rainforest fauna. While the resultant impact predictions are severe, no attempt has yet been made to evaluate the transferability of the models on which such predictions have been founded. Here, we address this deficiency by testing predictive distribution models using a “space-for-time” approach and data on rainforest birds. Specifically, we use species-climate relationships established within the Wet Tropics region to predict the distribution of the same species in warmer, lower latitude rainforests on Cape York Peninsula. We then use independently collected observation data to test these predictions.

Contact:

Centre for Tropical Biodiversity & Climate Change

School of Marine & Tropical Biology, JCU