PARENT SESSION
Oral Session #44: Global Change and Climate Change.
Presiding: C. Wessman
Tuesday, August 6. 1:00 PM to 4:45 PM. Grand Ballroom West, Radisson.
A globally coherent fingerprint of climate change impacts across biotic systems.
PARMESAN, CAMILLE*,1, 1 University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX
ABSTRACT- The number of studies which document long-term responses to regional climate change in species, communities, or ecosystems is increasing yearly. As the broad-scale patterns of response emerge, there has been increasing interest in determining the relative sensitivities of different species and ecosystems. Several studies and reports, including the Third Assessment Report of the IPCC, have predicted that high-elevation ecosystems will be among the most sensitive to small levels of warming, but few studies have documented this phenomena in observed responses to recent climate change. The relative sensitivities of different ecosystems to climate change may be easier to infer from a model taxon in which the effects of climate on biota are understood at a mechanistic level. One of the main responses to regional climate change has been a re-distribution of species or communities. I will present patterns of change for high elevation populations of Edith's Checkerspot butterfly (Euphydryas editha). Observed and inferred processes operating on population dynamics offer some mechanistic understanding of the previously documented upward elevation range shift in this species.
KEY WORDS: Euphydryas editha, climate change, population extinction, El Nino