When and how can we predict adaptive responses to climate change?

Predicting if, when, and how populations can adapt to climate change constitutes one of the greatest challenges in science today. Here, we build from contributions to the special issue on evolutionary adaptation to climate change, a survey of its authors, and recent literature to explore the limits and opportunities for predicting adaptive responses to climate change. We outline what might be predictable now, in the future, and perhaps never even with our best efforts.

Evolutionary adaptation to climate change.

When the notion of climate change emerged over 200 years ago, few speculated as to the impact of rising atmospheric temperatures on biological life. Tens of decades later, research clearly demonstrates that the impact of climate change on life on Earth is enormous, ongoing, and with foreseen effects lasting well into the next century. Responses to climate change have been widely documented.

Habitat connectivity is determined by the scale of habitat loss and dispersal strategy.

Understanding factors that ameliorate the impact of habitat loss is a major focus of conservation research. One key factor influencing species persistence and evolution is the ability to disperse across increasingly patchy landscapes. Here we ask whether interpatch distance (a proxy for habitat loss) and dispersal strategy can interact to form thresholds where connectivity breaks down.

Alleles underlying larval foraging behaviour influence adult dispersal in nature.

The dispersal and migration of organisms have resulted in the colonisation of nearly every possible habitat and ultimately the extraordinary diversity of life. Animal dispersal tendencies are commonly heterogeneous (e.g.