Biodiversité

Species distribution models (SDMs) are statistical tools that relate species observations to environmental conditions to retrieve ecological niches and predict species' potential geographic distributions. The quality and robustness of SDMs clearly depend on good modelling practices including ascertaining the ecological relevance of predictors for the studied species and choosing an appropriate spatial resolution (or ‘grain size').

To understand how functional traits and evolutionary history shape the geographic distribution of plant life on Earth, we need to integrate high‐quality and global‐scale distribution data with functional and phylogenetic information. Large‐scale distribution data for plants are, however, often restricted to either certain taxonomic groups or geographic regions.

Approaches to understanding change in plant function due to climate change often assume a fixed response: a given amount of climate forcing will cause a given amount of change in the measure of interest. Our study shows that this will not be the case for phenology. Effects of warming will be context dependent and vary with natural climate variability. Experimental warming in early, warm springs led to a greater advance of leafing, but more variation among species.