Improving the community-temperature index as a climate change indicator.
Climate change indicators are tools to assess, visualize and communicate the impacts of climate change on species and communities. Indicators that can be applied to different taxa are particularly useful because they allow comparative analysis to identify which kinds of species are being more affect...
Saved in:
| Main Authors: | , |
|---|---|
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Public Library of Science (PLoS)
2017-01-01
|
| Series: | PLoS ONE |
| Online Access: | https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0184275&type=printable |
| Tags: |
Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
|
| _version_ | 1850078998002925568 |
|---|---|
| author | Diana Bowler Katrin Böhning-Gaese |
| author_facet | Diana Bowler Katrin Böhning-Gaese |
| author_sort | Diana Bowler |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Climate change indicators are tools to assess, visualize and communicate the impacts of climate change on species and communities. Indicators that can be applied to different taxa are particularly useful because they allow comparative analysis to identify which kinds of species are being more affected. A general prediction, supported by empirical data, is that the abundance of warm-adapted species should increase over time, relative to the cool-adapted ones within communities, under increasing ambient temperatures. The community temperature index (CTI) is a community weighted mean of species' temperature preferences and has been used as an indicator to summarize this temporal shift. The CTI has the advantages of being a simple and generalizable indicator; however, a core problem is that temporal trends in the CTI may not only reflect changes in temperature. This is because species' temperature preferences often covary with other species attributes, and these other attributes may affect species response to other environmental drivers. Here, we propose a novel model-based approach that separates the effects of temperature preference from the effects of other species attributes on species' abundances and subsequently on the CTI. Using long-term population data of breeding birds in Denmark and demersal marine fish in the southeastern North Sea, we find differences in CTI trends with the original approach and our model-based approach, which may affect interpretation of climate change impacts. We suggest that our method can be used to test the robustness of CTI trends to the possible effects of other drivers of change, apart from climate change. |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj-art-8a4a48a28e0d4006b528371a90cf847c |
| institution | DOAJ |
| issn | 1932-6203 |
| language | English |
| publishDate | 2017-01-01 |
| publisher | Public Library of Science (PLoS) |
| record_format | Article |
| series | PLoS ONE |
| spelling | doaj-art-8a4a48a28e0d4006b528371a90cf847c2025-08-20T02:45:23ZengPublic Library of Science (PLoS)PLoS ONE1932-62032017-01-01129e018427510.1371/journal.pone.0184275Improving the community-temperature index as a climate change indicator.Diana BowlerKatrin Böhning-GaeseClimate change indicators are tools to assess, visualize and communicate the impacts of climate change on species and communities. Indicators that can be applied to different taxa are particularly useful because they allow comparative analysis to identify which kinds of species are being more affected. A general prediction, supported by empirical data, is that the abundance of warm-adapted species should increase over time, relative to the cool-adapted ones within communities, under increasing ambient temperatures. The community temperature index (CTI) is a community weighted mean of species' temperature preferences and has been used as an indicator to summarize this temporal shift. The CTI has the advantages of being a simple and generalizable indicator; however, a core problem is that temporal trends in the CTI may not only reflect changes in temperature. This is because species' temperature preferences often covary with other species attributes, and these other attributes may affect species response to other environmental drivers. Here, we propose a novel model-based approach that separates the effects of temperature preference from the effects of other species attributes on species' abundances and subsequently on the CTI. Using long-term population data of breeding birds in Denmark and demersal marine fish in the southeastern North Sea, we find differences in CTI trends with the original approach and our model-based approach, which may affect interpretation of climate change impacts. We suggest that our method can be used to test the robustness of CTI trends to the possible effects of other drivers of change, apart from climate change.https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0184275&type=printable |
| spellingShingle | Diana Bowler Katrin Böhning-Gaese Improving the community-temperature index as a climate change indicator. PLoS ONE |
| title | Improving the community-temperature index as a climate change indicator. |
| title_full | Improving the community-temperature index as a climate change indicator. |
| title_fullStr | Improving the community-temperature index as a climate change indicator. |
| title_full_unstemmed | Improving the community-temperature index as a climate change indicator. |
| title_short | Improving the community-temperature index as a climate change indicator. |
| title_sort | improving the community temperature index as a climate change indicator |
| url | https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0184275&type=printable |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT dianabowler improvingthecommunitytemperatureindexasaclimatechangeindicator AT katrinbohninggaese improvingthecommunitytemperatureindexasaclimatechangeindicator |