10.5061/DRYAD.CQ83B
Bailey, Liam D.
Australian National University
van de Pol, Martijn
Nederlands Instituut voor Ecologie
Australian National University
Data from: Tackling extremes: challenges for ecological and evolutionary
research on extreme climatic events
Dryad
dataset
2016
predictability
selective pressure
Threshold responses
Multi-event study
extreme climate
Truncation selection
Climate events
2016-09-21T00:00:00Z
2016-09-21T00:00:00Z
en
https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2656.12451
8550 bytes
1
CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication
1. Extreme climatic events (ECEs) are predicted to become more frequent as
the climate changes. A rapidly increasing number of studies - though few
on animals - suggest that the biological consequences of ECEs can be
severe. 2. However, ecological research on the impacts of extreme climatic
events (ECEs) has been limited by a lack of cohesiveness and structure.
ECEs are often poorly defined and have often been confusingly equated with
climatic variability, making comparison between studies difficult.
Additionally, a focus on short-term studies has provided us with little
information on the long-term implications of ECEs, and the descriptive and
anecdotal nature of many studies has meant it is still unclear what the
key research questions are. 3. Synthesizing the current state of work is
essential to identify ways to make progress. We conduct a synthesis of the
literature and discuss conceptual and practical challenges faced by
research on ECEs. 4. We consider three steps to advance research. First,
we discuss the importance of choosing an ECE definition and identify the
pros and cons of ‘climatological’ and ‘biological’ definitions of ECEs.
Second, we advocate research beyond short-term descriptive studies to
address questions concerning the long-term implications of ECEs, focussing
on selective pressures and phenotypically plastic responses and how they
might differ from responses to a changing climatic mean. Finally, we
encourage a greater focus on multi-event studies that help us understand
the implications of changing patterns of ECEs, through the combined use of
modelling, experimental and observational field studies. 5. This paper
aims to open a discussion on the definitions, questions and methods
currently used to study ECEs, which will lead to a more cohesive approach
to future ECE research.
Bailey and van de Pol Literature search dataThe .csv file contains
information on papers published on 'extreme climatic events' or
ECEs available on Web of Science. Data includes number of ECEs considered,
type of study organism (e.g. plant, animal), and whether or not ECEs were
effectively defined within the paper. All data on the ECE literature was
collected using a literature analysis conducted in Web of Science with the
term extreme* climatic* event*. We considered any studies that
investigated the ecological impacts of ECEs and recorded the number of
ECEs encompassed by each study. We used any ECE as defined by the author,
as we were more interested in the number of events covered than the
specific way in which they were defined. Review papers and meta-analyses
were excluded. We found 243 studies, with the earliest study published in
1991.BaileyandvandePol_LitSearch_data.csv