The influence of climate on species’ geographic distributions and interactions.

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As a result of substantial effort over the past two decades, there are now many documented cases of how species are responding to climate change. However, our understanding of the mechanisms underlying these responses remains limited and many key processes are often ignored in predictive modelling. Without considering the mechanisms that drive species responses to climate change, the potential consequences of these responses for communities and ecosystems are difficult to accurately predict. The long-term goal of my research program is to achieve a mechanistic understanding of the ecological and evolutionary processes that structure species interactions and geographic distributions. My aim is to use this research to more accurately predict how interacting species respond to environmental change. For the next five years, I propose two new components as part of my research program that will integrate mechanistic and phenomenological approaches to meet two short-term objectives: 1) determine the effect of seasonal timing (phenology) on structuring species northern range limits and 2) disentangle the relative importance of direct and indirect effects (i.e. species interactions) of climate change on plants and their insect herbivores. I have made significant progress in the two areas that are related to these goals. For example, my work is an important empirical demonstration of the practical utilities and limitations of species distribution models in predicting species’ future range shifts and understanding fundamental ecological concepts such as range limits. My work has also advanced our understanding of temperature effects on trophic interactions.