Journal Article: Improving Conservation Outcomes with a New Paradigm for Understanding Species’ Fundamental and Realized Adaptive Capacity

Worldwide, many species are responding to ongoing climate change with shifts in distribution, abundance, phenology, or behavior. Consequently, natural-resource managers face increasingly urgent conservation questions related to biodiversity loss, expansion of invasive species, and deteriorating ecosystem services. We argue that our ability to address these questions is hampered by the lack of explicit consideration of species’ adaptive capacity (AC). AC is the ability of a species or population to cope with climatic changes and is characterized by three fundamental components: phenotypic plasticity, dispersal ability, and genetic diversity. However, few studies simultaneously address all elements; often, AC is confused...

Categories: Data, Publication; Types: Citation; Tags: Academics & scientific researchers, California, Climate adaptation, Completed, EARTH SCIENCE > LAND SURFACE > LANDSCAPE, All tags... Federal resource managers, Great Basin, Great Basin, LCC Network Science Catalog, Montane, Nevada, Pika, Report, State agencies, biota, climate change, conservation management, environment, fundamental adaptive capacity, policy-relevant research questions, realized adaptive capacity, vulnerability assessment, Fewer tags