Robert K Colwell

Arising from: C. Trisos et al. Nature 580, 496–501, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2189-9 (2020).
ABSTRACT The fundamental assumption behind this provocative study (Trisos et al. 2020) is that current and future climatic tolerance limits for a species can be inferred from the last 170 years of climate records within its current distribution. Using this approach, the authors project the probable fate, in time, of sets of supposedly co-occurring species “assemblages,” under modeled future climates. Without any doubt, the fate of species under ongoing climate change is urgent and alarming, but I suggest that both the synchrony of exposure to intolerable climate regimes and the “ecological disruptions” arising from such exposure may be substantially overestimated in by this study.