Biology Eminent Scholar, Robert D. Holt, together with colleagues from the US and seven other countries, published an important new paper in Science, “Improving the forecast for biodiversity under climate change” (9 September 2016). The paper argues that most current models for the effects of climate change on biodiversity do not provide sufficiently accurate predictions. The main reason for this is that the models do not include important biological mechanisms known to affect biodiversity, including species interactions, dispersal, demography, evolution, environment and physiology. The paper outlines an approach to making predictive models more biologically realistic, which will enhance our ability to mitigate future changes in biodiversity.
