Understanding the distribution and abundance of terrestrial vertebrates in a changing world

Understanding why species are not uniformly distributed in geographic space is critical for informing proactive conservation decision-making. Climate, habitat, and human activities together shape species’ distributions; however, the relative roles of these different drivers are often unclear.

I will present the outcomes of several macroecological studies exploring the mechanisms underlying large-scale patterns of species’ distributions and abundance.

My research has revealed that environmental factors such as land cover, topography, and anthropogenic threats are often as important as climate – or even more so – in determining species’ distributions. This work has also shown that species’ responses to environmental change are modulated by their adaptive capacity.

It is important to disentangle the roles of extrinsic environmental conditions and species' intrinsic biological traits if we are to fully understand and predict the impacts of environmental change on species’ distributions.

I will show how macroecological approaches can be used to provide such insights, which are key for predicting the vulnerability of ecosystems to environmental change.