Davis A J, Jenkinson L S, Lawton J H, Shorrocks B, Wood S
Ecology and Evolution Group, Biology Department, The University, Leeds, Yorkshire, UK.
Nature. 1998 Feb 19;391(6669):783-6. doi: 10.1038/35842.
Many attempts to predict the biotic responses to climate change rely on the 'climate envelope' approach, in which the current distribution of a species is mapped in climate-space and then, if the position of that climate-space changes, the distribution of the species is predicted to shift accordingly. The flaw in this approach is that distributions of species also reflect the influence of interactions with other species, so predictions based on climate envelopes may be very misleading if the interactions between species are altered by climate change. An additional problem is that current distributions may be the result of sources and sinks, in which species appear to thrive in places where they really persist only because individuals disperse into them from elsewhere. Here we use microcosm experiments on simple but realistic assemblages to show how misleading the climate envelope approach can be. We show that dispersal and interactions, which are important elements of population dynamics, must be included in predictions of biotic responses to climate change.
许多预测生物对气候变化反应的尝试都依赖于“气候包络线”方法，即把一个物种当前的分布绘制在气候空间中，然后，如果该气候空间的位置发生变化，就预测该物种的分布会相应地发生转移。这种方法的缺陷在于，物种的分布也反映了与其他物种相互作用的影响，因此，如果物种间的相互作用因气候变化而改变，基于气候包络线的预测可能会极具误导性。另一个问题是，当前的分布可能是源和汇的结果，即物种似乎在某些地方繁荣，但实际上它们仅因个体从其他地方扩散到那里才得以存续。在这里，我们通过对简单但现实的群落进行微观实验，来展示气候包络线方法可能会有多大的误导性。我们表明，扩散和相互作用作为种群动态的重要要素，必须纳入对生物对气候变化反应的预测中。
