Biodiversity

Biography

Biography: Kaipo Dye

Abstract

Climate change has emerged as one of the hottest topics in global change ecology and rightfully so, contended to being the greatest challenge to biodiversity conservation targets in the 21st century. In retrospect, this appraisal is typically acted upon from a monotypic (and or causality) context. Here we present a first of its kind, global-level approximation of pressures faced by species from a multi-threat perspective. Our results indicate a strikingly clear pattern that climate vulnerable species are threatened by more non-climatic threats than non-vulnerable species. Further, this pattern displays a distinct trend that is highly relevant with a species IUCN Red List conservation status. In this study, we do not imply that climate change is directly responsible for a greater likelihood of a species being threatened by other stressors. While this may be true for some species, several studies indicate that vulnerability is the sum of cumulative effects from multiple threats and others contend that vulnerability is controlled by the species life-history traits (exposure, sensitivity and adaptability). What we are suggesting is that researchers need to better understand if and why the combined effects of stressors are greater than the sum of individual effects in a multi-threat context. This should serves as a reminder of likely complexities of species under projected climate impact and potential interactions with other rapidly evolving non-climatic threats that are equally confounding.