Disentangling the synergistic effects of habitat loss, climate change, and invasive species on biodiversity: an holistic approach to global environmental change research

We are currently experiencing what has been termed the sixth mass extinction event, with observed and estimated species extinction rates orders of magnitude larger than long term (geological) background rates, for a wide variety of taxa. Whilst there are multiple drivers of contemporary extinctions, three of the primary drivers are known to be habitat loss, climate change and invasive species. A large body of work exists detailing how each of these individual drivers affects biodiversity and leads to extinctions. However, this work has focused on individual drivers in isolation from other factors, and it thus ignores any synergistic effects. This has likely led to an underestimate of the overall effect of global environmental change on biodiversity, and has potentially resulted in the generation of suboptimal information for biodiversity conservation and management.

To accurately assess the impacts of global environmental change of biodiversity therefore requires a synergistic approach; focusing on the interactions between these three drivers at a macroecological (i.e. continental and global) scales. The proposed project will develop and implement this synergistic approach through the generation and testing of novel theoretical predictions, and the collection and analysis of already published empirical data. The project will identify models of how the three main drivers of global environmental change interact to impact biodiversity; these will be translated into prescriptions for future biodiversity conservation and management actions.

The project will evaluate: 1) the ability of species to shift their ranges in fragmented landscapes in response to climate change, 2) the ability of species to persist in novel climatic conditions in the presence of invasive species, and 3) how ecological communities containing high numbers of invasive species are able to respond to large scale habitat loss.

The project will involve the collection and assembly of secondary data. Data collection will be undertaken by searching through online biodiversity databases and published material and via links with other global researchers.

The analytical element of the project will be split into two parts: a meta-analysis, and the development of global models. The former will involve designing a meta-analysis, using the collected data, to evaluate the synergistic effects of the three primary global environmental change drivers. This will involve standard meta-analysis and linear modelling techniques. The latter will involve undertaking a landscape modelling approach to simulate species’ range shifts under climate change in different landscape habitat loss scenarios. The scenarios will be developed with support from colleagues at the partner organisations and linked to IUCN policy goals.