Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.
Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Organismal Biology, Iowa State University, Ames, IA 50010, USA.
Science. 2021 Feb 5;371(6529):633-636. doi: 10.1126/science.abd4605.
High exposure to warming from climate change is expected to threaten biodiversity by pushing many species toward extinction. Such exposure is often assessed for all taxa at a location from climate projections, yet species have diverse strategies for buffering against temperature extremes. We compared changes in species occupancy and site-level richness of small mammal and bird communities in protected areas of the Mojave Desert using surveys spanning a century. Small mammal communities remained remarkably stable, whereas birds declined markedly in response to warming and drying. Simulations of heat flux identified different exposure to warming for birds and mammals, which we attribute to microhabitat use. Estimates from climate projections are unlikely to accurately reflect species' exposure without accounting for the effects of microhabitat buffering on heat flux.
预计气候变化引起的高温暴露将通过迫使许多物种灭绝来威胁生物多样性。这种暴露通常是通过气候预测来评估一个地点的所有分类群，但物种有各种策略来缓冲极端温度。我们使用跨越一个世纪的调查比较了莫哈韦沙漠保护区中小哺乳动物和鸟类社区的物种占有率和站点水平丰富度的变化。小哺乳动物群落保持了显著的稳定性，而鸟类则因变暖变干而明显减少。热通量的模拟确定了鸟类和哺乳动物对变暖的不同暴露，我们将其归因于微生境的利用。如果不考虑微生境缓冲对热通量的影响，气候预测的估计不太可能准确反映物种的暴露情况。
