Climate change may not claim as many species as we thought
Tropical species are the most likely to go extinct (Jan Gemerle/Unsplash/)Humans are putting ecosystems to the test in the global science experiment that is climate change. Organisms are shifting to new habitats as their preferred climate moves up in elevation or poleward (or is outright destroyed), and are going extinct at rates amped up about 1,000 times by humans. Ecologists have yet to settle on an estimate of how many will manage to weather this change—whether by moving or by acclimating—and how many will perish. Their predictions have varied widely, with climate change causing between zero and 54 percent of species to disappear. Many of these estimates are based on computer models that try to predict extinction based on where species’ ideal climate will move as temperatures warm. But a new study, published Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, looks to the past to understand how over...