Climate Change, Range Shifts and Multitrophic Interactions

Climate change represents one of the most serious threats to biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. The current rate of temperature change, driven primarily by the human combus‐ tion of fossil fuels, far exceeds rates that have occurred in at least 10,000 years (lower Pleisto‐ cene) and perhaps much longer (IPCC, 2014). That last major climate change event precipitated a mass extinction that led to the sudden demise of many large quadrupeds, including such characteristic species as the woolly mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, mastodon, giant elk, sabertoothed tiger and dire wolf [1]. One of the major differences between landscapes at the time of previous climate change events and the current one is that the biosphere is now dominated by a single species, Homo sapiens sapiens, which has profoundly altered and simplified many terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. Thus, in addition to climate change, natural ecosystems have been altered by other human-induced changes including deforestation, eutrophication, over-harvesting, the introduction of non-native species and various types of pollution. Consequently, species and populations are being challenged by multiple stressors, making it more difficult for them to adapt to rapid shifts in climate regimes. One can strongly argue that we no longer live in the Holocene but in the Anthropocene [2,3].