The July 6th issue of Current Biology published “Predicting biotic responses to future climate warming with classic ecogeographic rules” co-authored by CUG doctoral student TIAN Li from the State Key Laboratory of Biogeology and Environmental Geology and the researcher from the University of Bristol.
Models for future environmental change all involve global warming, whether slow or fast. Predicting how plants and animals will respond to such warming can be aided by using ecogeographic biological ‘rules’, some long-established, that make predictions based on observations in nature, as well as plausible physiological and ecological expectations. Bergmann’s rule is well known, namely that warm-blooded animals are generally smaller in warm climates, but six further temperature-related rules — Allen’s rule, Gloger’s rule, Hesse’s rule, Jordan’s rule, Rapoport’s rule and Thorson’s rule — are also worth considering as predictive tools. These rules have been discussed in the recent ecological and physiological literature, and in some cases meta-analytical studies of multiple studies show how they are applicable across taxa and in particular physical environmental situations.
Fig. 1 Seven well-known biologists/ecologists and ecogeographic biological rules named after them
Fig. 2 Predictions of biological-ecological changes with global warming based on ecogeographic biological rules
(Edited and translated from the Chinese version)
