Editorial: Mammalian responses to climate change: From organisms to communities

Résumé

A particularly powerful component of the Anthropocene extinction is global climate change, which, in concert with other elements of anthropogenic forcing, is driving the reorganization of biotic assemblages everywhere on the planet. Rising ambient temperature challenges the adaptive capacity of organisms and for terrestrial animals it can directly cause lethal hyperthermia or dehydration. More generally however, the indirect effects of climate change permeate all facets of the environment including habitat quality (food, water, refuge availability) and risks from predators, competitors, and pathogens (Fig. 1). Chronic exposure to environmental conditions that exceed critical thresholds at critical times of year ultimately result in a convergence of sublethal fitness costs (Pattinson et al. 2022). Such costs could arise from disturbances to physiological processes and behavioral patterns, which become expressed at the population level as changes in vital rates and habitat occupancy. These in turn drive shifts in species ranges or even extinctions, with consequences at community and ecosystem levels. The papers in this Research Topic explore these interactions and their implications.

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