Jeremy Vanderwal

James Cook University | JCU · School of Marine & Tropical Biology

Climate change is a driving force of changes to biodiversity worldwide and presents considerable management challenges for the resource-constrained environmental management sector. Effective management of biodiversity requires information about what species are present, how species respond to environmental conditions and which species are likely to...

Australia’s northern savannas have among the highest fire frequencies in the world. The climate is monsoonal, with a long, dry season of up to 9 months, during which most fires occur. The Australian Government’s Emissions Reduction Fund allows land managers to generate carbon credits by abating the direct emissions of CO2 equivalent gases via presc...

Increases in mean temperatures caused by anthropogenic climate change increase the frequency and severity of temperature extremes. Although extreme temperature events are likely to become increasingly important drivers of species' response to climate change, the impacts are poorly understood owing mainly to a lack of understanding of species’ physi...

One and a half degrees on biodiversity Insects are the most diverse group of animals on Earth and are ubiquitous in terrestrial food webs. We have little information about their fate in a changing climate; data are scant for insects compared with other groups of organisms. Warren et al. performed a global-scale analysis of the effects of climate ch...

Increasingly complex research questions and global challenges (e.g., climate change and biodiversity loss) are driving rapid development, refinement, and uses of technology in ecology. This trend is spawning a distinct sub‐discipline, here termed “technoecology.” We highlight recent ground‐breaking and transformative technological advances for stud...

Climate change is already affecting species and their distributions. Distributional range changes have occurred and are projected to intensify for many widespread plants and animals, creating associated risks to many ecosystems. Here, we estimate the climate change-related risks to the species in globally significant biodiversity conservation areas...

Manmade climate change is real, it’s happening now, and it’s among the greatest challenges we face on planet Earth. The research looks at the projected impacts of a range of warming scenarios on different species groups in 35 ‘Priority Places’ for conservation. These regions contain some of the richest and most remarkable biodiversity on the planet...

Marine reserves are widely used to protect species important for conservation and fisheries and to help maintain ecological processes that sustain their populations, including recruitment and dispersal. Achieving these goals requires well-connected networks of marine reserves that maximize larval connectivity, thus allowing exchanges between popula...

Marine reserves are widely used to protect species important for conservation and fisheries and to help maintain ecological processes that sustain their populations, including recruitment and dispersal. Achieving these goals requires well-connected networks of marine reserves that maximize larval connectivity, thus allowing exchanges between popula...

Rangelands are areas used primarily for grazing by domestic livestock; however, because they support native vegetation and fauna, their potential role in conservation should not be overlooked. Typically, “off-reserve” conservation in agricultural landscapes assumes a trade-off between maintaining the ecological processes that support biodiversity a...

Aim Regional‐scale assessments are frequently conceived to guide the strategic application of conservation actions. Although changes to priority areas from initial assessments are inevitable, the transition from regional‐scale assessment to implementing local actions is poorly understood. An outstanding question concerns the frequency with which re...

Domestic livestock grazing directly alters ground‐level habitat but its effects on arboreal habitat are poorly known. Similarly, the response to grazing of ground‐dwelling fauna has been examined, but there are few studies of arboreal fauna. Globally, grazing has been implicated in the decline of vertebrate fauna species, but some species appear re...

Aim Climate change threatens biodiversity in all ecosystems, and major shifts in species distributions are expected. Freshwater ecosystems are considered particularly vulnerable due to the ectothermic physiology of most freshwater species and their limited habitat extent and capacity to track climate trends. In this study, we examined what broad pa...

Aim Species that respond favourably to environmental change tend to be mobile or dispersive. Living within trees has some benefits over life on the ground. Species that move vertically within forest canopies can take advantage of increased complexity and resource availability, which should correspond to increased resilience to environmental variabi...

With the high rate of ecosystem change already occurring and predicted to occur in the coming decades, long-term conservation has to account not only for current biodiversity but also for the biodiversity patterns anticipated for the future. The trade-offs between prioritising future biodiversity at the expense of current priorities must be underst...

The correlation between each of the predictor variables. (XLSX)

This supporting file contains tables and figures: S1 Appendix Table A. S1 Appendix, Figure A. S1 Appendix, Figure B. S1 Appendix, Figure C. S1 Appendix, Figure D. S1 Appendix, Figure E. (DOC)

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0126274.].

Modelling and communicating scientific data are paramount in Disaster planning, yet is not easily communicated and interpreted by non-expert stakeholders. These stakeholders are essential to the disaster response planning because they can provide firsthand experience and knowledge not captured by quantitative methods. This project aimed to develop...

The effect of twenty-first-century climate change on biodiversity is commonly forecast based on modelled shifts in species ranges, linked to habitat suitability. These projections have been coupled with species-area relationships (SAR) to infer extinction rates indirectly as a result of the loss of climatically suitable areas and associated habitat...

Protected areas are essential, but not sufficient on their own, to conserve biodiversity into the future. Rangelands, used primarily for livestock grazing, have the potential to complement existing reserve systems and be used for “off-reserve” conservation. Success relies on our ability to manage rangelands to simultaneously achieve positive econom...

The threat of anthropogenic climate change has seen a renewed focus on understanding contemporary patterns of species distribution. This is especially the case for the biota of tropical mountains, because tropical species often have particularly narrow elevational ranges and there are high levels of short-range endemism. Here we describe geographic...

Ant species and their frequency of occurrence in the six subregions. (DOCX)

Permission from the copyright holder to publish Fig 1. (DOCX)

Correlation between ant species richness and latitude, elevation and inetraction of these two factors. (DOCX)

Extinction risk for frogs in the Australian wet tropics under a baseline ‘no climate change’ scenario

Extinction risk for frogs in the Australian wet tropics simulated using an extreme Allee effect

Extinction risk for frogs in the Australian wet tropics simulated using an extreme Allee effect

Extinction risk for frogs in the Australian wet tropics under a baseline ‘no climate change’ scenario

Detailed description of the methods

Sensitivity analysis for niche-population models

Sensitivity analysis for niche-population models

Detailed description of the methods

Climate change may drastically alter patterns of species distributions and richness, but predicting future species patterns in occurrence is challenging. Significant shifts in distributions have already been observed, and understanding these recent changes can improve our understanding of potential future changes. We assessed how past climate chang...

Advances in computing power and infrastructure, increases in the number and size of ecological and environmental datasets, and the number and type of data collection methods, are revolutionizing the field of Ecology. To integrate these advances, virtual laboratories offer a unique tool to facilitate, expedite, and accelerate research into the impac...

Assessments of species vulnerability to climate change should increase the effectiveness of interventions in the current decline in biodiversity. Species vulnerability to climate change is a consequence of their sensitivity and adaptive capacity, in combination with their exposure to climate change. We apply a vulnerability assessment framework to...

Australia has experienced dramatic declines and extinctions of its native rodent species over the last 200 years, particularly in southern Australia. In the tropical savanna of northern Australia significant declines have occurred only in recent decades. The later onset of these declines suggests that the causes may differ from earlier declines in...

To conserve a declining species we first need to diagnose the causes of decline. This is one of the most challenging tasks faced by conservation practitioners. In this study, we used temporally explicit species distribution models (SDMs) to test whether shifting weather can explain the recent decline of a marsupial carnivore, the eastern quoll (Das...

Areas of suitable habitat for species and communities have arisen, shifted, and disappeared with Pleistocene climate cycles, and through this shifting landscape, current biodiversity has found paths to the present. Evolutionary refugia, areas of relative habitat stability in this shifting landscape, support persistence of lineages through time, and...

Wide-scale and high resolution urban sensing to monitor the climate and traffic conditions along the road would benefit urban decision-making and environmental research. This resolution can be accomplished via an intelligent streetlight platform. Solid-state street lights offers several advanced features over existing lighting infrastructure, but r...

While gradual changes in climate means will have numerous effects on a range of environmental, social, and economic sectors, emerging evidence shows that many of the environmental, social, and economic impacts of anthropogenic climate change will arise from shifts in the regimes of extreme weather and climatic events, including heat waves, fires, f...

The recent commentary by Woinarski (2014, Global Ecology and Biogeography, doi: 10.1111/geb.12165) disagreed with our conclusions on the correlates of decline in the marsupials of tropical Australia (Fisher et al., 2014, Global Ecology and Biogeography, 23, 181–190). We compared traits of species that were associated with range decline in southern...

Barramundi, Lates calcarifer, is an iconic and important tropical finfish species that is primarily farmed in open pond, raceway and sea cage facilities. In Australia, barramundi naturally occur in an area ranging from the Ashburton River, Western Australia (22° 30’ S), across northern Australia, and as far south on the east coast as the Noosa Rive...

Phylogeographic endemism, the degree to which the history of recently evolved lineages is spatially restricted, reflects fundamental evolutionary processes such as cryptic divergence, adaptation and biological responses to environmental heterogeneity. Attempts to explain the extraordinary diversity of the tropics, which often includes deep phylogeo...

To assess a species' vulnerability to climate change, we commonly use mapped environmental data that are coarsely resolved in time and space. Coarsely resolved temperature data are typically inaccurate at predicting temperatures in microhabitats used by an organism and may also exhibit spatial bias in topographically complex areas. One consequence...

We model the occurrence of biodiversity as a function of environmental variables to estimate its distribution. This is an alternative to close the gaps of species occurrence information, and to support decision-making. Herein we’ve evaluated the distribution patterns of two dimensions of biodiversity: community composition and species richness for...

Identifying refugia is a critical component of effective conservation of biodiversity under anthropogenic climate change. However, despite a surge in conceptual and practical interest, identifying refugia remains a significant challenge across diverse continental landscapes. We provide an overview of the key properties of refugia that promote speci...

Determining how ecological and evolutionary processes produce spatial variation in local species richness remains an unresolved challenge. Using mountains as a model system, we outline an integrative research approach to evaluate the influence of ecological and evolutionary mechanisms on the generation and maintenance of patterns of species richnes...

Aim Our aims were to identify centres of endemism and to infer whether these areas have functioned as refugia for subtropical rain forest plants through his- torical climate fluctuations. Location Subtropical eastern Australia (23–33° S; 145–155° E). Methods We collated 25,000 records of 179 endemic rain forest plants to identify geographical are...

Aim Species distribution models ( SDM s) generally use correlative relationships between the species location and the associated environment to project the species potential distribution under climate change. While projecting a future suitable climatic space is relatively simple using SDM s, predicting a species ability to occupy that space relies...

Aim Accurately documenting and predicting declines and shifts in species’ distributions is fundamental for implementing effective conservation strategies and directing future research; species distribution models ( SDM ) have become a powerful tool for such work. Nevertheless, much of the data used to create these models are opportunistic and often...

Aim Correlative species distribution models ( SDM s) combined with spatial layers of climate and species' localities represent a frequently utilized and rapid method for generating spatial estimates of species distributions. However, an SDM is only as accurate as the inputs upon which it is based. Current best‐practice climate layers commonly utili...

Quantitative simulations of the global-scale benefits of climate change mitigation are presented, using a harmonised, self-consistent approach based on a single set of climate change scenarios. The approach draws on a synthesis of output from both physically-based and economics-based models, and incorporates uncertainty analyses. Previous studies h...

Background/Question/Methods Contemporary climate (temperature, precipitation etc.) strongly affects species distributions, which is why there are a plethora of modeling exercises that build statistical relations between species occurrences and long-term (e.g., 30- or 50-year) climate means. Yet, while ecologists increasingly recognize the dynamic...

Climate change is expected to have significant influences on terrestrial biodiversity at all system levels, including species-level reductions in range size and abundance, especially amongst endemic species1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. However, little is known about how mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions could reduce biodiversity impacts, particularly amon...

Severe climatic changes are predicted for Australia before the close of this century. Climate change threatens biodiversity in all ecosystems; a management and conservation priority is to identify areas and habitats — refuges — that could shelter species from the worst impacts. Freshwater ecosystems contain high biodiversity, but are especially vul...

We are currently facing the likelihood of severe climate change before the close of the century. In the face of such a global driver of species loss, we urgently need to identify refugia that will shelter species from the worst impacts of climate change. This will be a critical component of successful conservation and management of our biodiversity...

Species are largely predicted to shift poleward as global temperatures increase, with this fingerprint of climate change being already observed across a range of taxonomic groups and, mostly temperate, geographic locations(1-5). However, the assumption of uni-directional distribution shifts does not account for complex interactions among temperatur...

We conduct a phylogeographic study of the Crested Drongo (Dicrurus forficatus forficatus), a broadly distributed bird species on Madagascar. We first determined the demographic and spatial pattern inferred from mitochondrial and nuclear data, and then compared these results with predictions from a present to 0.120-Myr-old reconstruction of the spat...

Aim A third of all modern (after 1500) mammal extinctions (24/77) are Australian species. These extinctions have been restricted to southern A ustralia, predominantly in species of ‘critical weight range’ (35–5500 g) in drier climate zones. Introduced red foxes ( V ulpes vulpes ) that prey on species in this range are often blamed. A new wave of de...

In the first continental analysis of the effects of climate change on a faunal group, we identified that the climate space of 101 Australian terrestrial and inland water bird taxa is likely to be entirely gone by 2085, 16 marine taxa have breeding sites that are predicted to be at least 10% less productive than today, and 55 terrestrial taxa are li...

Pathogen spread can cause population declines and even species extinctions. Nonetheless, in the absence of tailored monitoring schemes, documenting pathogen spread can be difficult. In the case of worldwide amphibian declines the best present understanding is that the chytrid fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd) has recently spread, causing a...