Biomes and Species Distribution

2025-09-03 1

Other than the four bioclimatic zones in Finland, aquatic ecosystems are important such as lakes
The Baltic Sea is unique as a shallow landlocked brackish sea. It has strong gradients in ecosystems and is being affected greatly by climate change

Soil microbes are critical in terrestrial biomes, but are understudied
How do soil microbes vary in diversity and function? Using Functional Trait groups based on their ecological role
Cold desert soils had the lowest level of functional phylogeneticand taxonomic diversity.
By looking at functional gene groups, they can categorize the relative abundanceof soil microbes in different biomes and examine how they are different relative to each other.

Geological history and ecological succession are natural causes
Anthropogenic causes like climate change
- Tundra is being affected especially: Shrinking home range, phenology mismatch, treelines movingtohigher elevation and latitude
- Field based observations and remote sensing on plant community changes in the tundra is some interesting work
Invasive species, land modification, urbanization

Species Distribution Models
Thermal curves can measure a species tolerance for certain temperatures - an ecotherm
The breadth of thermal tolerance can determine if species is generalist or specialist
Species thermal index
- mean annual temperature within the range of aspecies
Community thermal index
- weighted mean of STIsin a species assemblage
Thermal preformance curves can be usedto predict how distributions will change with climate change
- Projected distributions of species based on IPCC climate predictions.Will it hold the same thermal predictions?
Temperature - relatively simple to study, but other factors like pH, pressure, light and food, so these predictions are not likely to be very specific.
Graph compares which variables effect which species

2003 meta analysis of changes in phenology andranges in 1700 species by Parmesan & Yohe in Nature
Species are moving towards poles, higher in elevation
279 showed a shift in phenology or ranges based on climate change
Phenology changes 2.3 days per decadeand range limit at 6.1km per decade
Thermophilisation of Finnish mothcommunities - cold adapted spcies have low persistence and lowcolonization rates of warm species
Warm adapted species are not moving into Finland much as climate warms

In warmer climates, typically biotic factors (Competition) are more important than abiotic factors (temperature, light, enegery availability) in range limits. This hypothesis was tested in three different ways

Future questions - how can we validate these prediction models? will it be able to effect this?