Climate change as a threat to the biodiversity of tropical rainforests in Australia

Abstract

[Extract] Forest destruction is thought to be the greatest threat to biodiversity in the tropics, particularly in the Amazon and tropical Asia (W. F. Laurance 1999). Climate change is sometimes discounted as a threat to tropical biotas and has been less studied in the tropics than in temperate, boreal, and arctic ecosystems. However, climate change has already produced significant and measurable impacts on almost all ecosystems around the globe and has altered species distributions, the timing of biological behaviors, assemblage composition, ecological interactions, and community dynamics (L. Hughes 2000; Walther et al. 2002; Parmesan and Yohe 2003; Root et al. 2003, 2005; Pounds et al. 2006). Recent analyses based on bioclimatic-distribution modeling suggested that climate change is potentially a greater threat to global biodiversity, including that in many tropical ecosystems, than is habitat destruction (Thomas et al. 2004).