The earth's warming trend has important implications for the geographic distributions of species, since climate affects biological traits and limits geographic ranges. The fossil record documents both successes and failures of species to persist, evolve and spread, in response to climatic change. Changing climate can trigger several different types of species responses. Species may (1) remain where they are and adapt (i.e. adjust genetically) to the altered local environment, (2) go extinct, (3) disperse with their optimal habitat as it shifts across latitude or altitude, or (4) form new species following range fragmentation. This project's theoretical research uses mathematical models to predict the joint evolutionary and ecological species responses to spatially and temporally varying environments. This study addresses how characteristics of the environment and of the species may result in extinction, local adaptation, range shift, and range fragmentation, and how ecological and genetic factors affect the magnitude of an evolutionary response. This study will determine a critical minimal rate of adaptive evolution and a critical minimal rate of spatial expansion that prevent extinction during rapid environmental changes.
Results will provide more reliable qualitative predictions than those based only on an ecological approach, and will allow a better understanding of experimental and field studies on biological aspects of global warming.
