Predicting the ecological and societal impact of species on the move with climate change in the UK

越来越多的人认识到，气候变化导致的物种再分配给全球社会和区域经济带来了深刻的挑战。除了对经济发展、生计、粮食安全、人类健康和文化造成严重后果外，物种的再分配正在考验我们对生态系统理解的极限，凸显出我们在预测生物多样性对全球环境变化的反应方面的关键知识差距。全球生物多样性分布的重组可以在英国这样的国家看到，最近的一项研究发现，在过去的十年里，至少有55种物种到达了英国，可能是由于气候变化；这些物种中约有20%被怀疑对生态系统或附近的人类社区产生积极或消极的影响。考虑到(a)数据集中无脊椎动物的代表性可能不足，以及(b)它只关注新到达的物种，而忽略了与气候变化相关的异常繁殖和大量丰度，以及已知对生态系统和/或社会产生负面影响的事实，预计这些数字严重低估了物种运动对生态系统和社会的可能影响。可悲的是，我们目前预测哪些物种正在随着气候变化改变它们的分布，以及这些重新分布可能产生的影响的能力是有限的。迫切需要跨学科的工作，以便能够快速识别可能有问题（或有益）的物种，以及气候变化下生物多样性再分配可能对生态和社会产生重大积极或消极影响的地点；这些信息是识别、确定优先级，然后减轻或预防未来风险的关键。随着新物种（例如靠近海岸或人口密度较高的物种）的到来，某些地理位置确实更有可能经历更高水平的社会和/或生态压力。人们还可以假设，特定性状与较大的再分布（例如，高度流动的物种）或更具破坏性的影响（例如，作为疾病媒介的物种）有关。这个博士项目将结合英国气候条件、物种生态和分布以及土地覆盖属性的独特数据集，采用最先进的定量方法来理解和预测景观、气候和其他因素（如个体特征）如何加速或减缓物种的传播。它的结果将提供第一个全面和空间明确的气候变化如何通过其对生物多样性的影响在不久的将来影响英国社会的图片，同时首次探索使物种可能成为良好入侵者的生态特征是否也是使物种可能更有效地重新分配以响应气候变化的特征。制定的框架将展示各国如何增强其能力，以减轻气候变化所导致的全球生物多样性重新分配的后果。

There is a growing recognition that the redistribution of species driven by a changing climate is creating profound challenges for societies and regional economies around the globe. As well as having serious consequences for economic development, livelihoods, food security, human health and culture, species' redistribution is testing the limit of our understanding of ecological systems, highlighting key knowledge gaps in our ability to predict biodiversity's response to global environmental change.The global reshuffle of biodiversity distribution can be witnessed in countries like the UK, where a recent study found that at least 55 species have arrived in the country in the past decade, likely due to climate change; around 20% of these species are suspected to impact positively or negatively on recipient ecosystems, or nearby human communities. These numbers are expected to be a gross underestimate of the likely impacts of species movements on ecosystems and society, given (a) the likely underrepresentation of invertebrates in the dataset, and (b) the fact that it only focused on new arrivals, disregarding, for example, unusual blooms and mass abundances linked to climate change and known to negatively impact ecosystems and/or society.Sadly, our current ability to predict which species are altering their distribution with climate change, and what the impacts of these redistributions may be, is limited. Interdisciplinary work is critically needed to enable the quick identification of species likely to be problematic (or beneficial) and locations likely to experience significant ecological and societal positive or negative impacts from biodiversity's redistribution under a changing climate; this information is key to identify, prioritize and then mitigate or prevent future risks. Certain geographic locations may indeed be more likely to experience a higher level of societal and/or ecological pressure with the arrival of new species (e.g. those near the coast or with higher human population densities). One might also hypothesize that specific traits are associated with larger redistributions (e.g. highly mobile species) or more damaging impacts (e.g. species that are vectors for disease).This PhD project will combine unique datasets on UK climatic conditions, species ecology and distribution as well as landcover attributes with state-of-the-art quantitative approaches to understand and predict how the landscape, climate, and other factors such as individual traits speed or slow species' spread. Its outcome will provide the first comprehensive and spatially-explicit picture of how climate change may impact UK society through its impact on biodiversity in the near future, while exploring for the first time whether the ecological traits that make species likely to be good invaders are also the traits that make species likely to redistribute more efficiently in response to climate change. The developed framework will provide a demonstration of how countries can enhance their ability to mitigate the consequences of a global redistribution of biodiversity underpinned by climate change.