Sponsor
We are grateful for the Rice University Creative Ventures fund that supported our working group, where ideas for this paper came together. Additional funding support came from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (Discovery Grant to J.L.W.), US National Science Foundation (DEB-2208857, DEB-2225027, and Sevilleta LTER (DEB-1655499 and DEB-1748133) to T.E.X.M.; DEB2413626 to M.L.D.; DEB-2335906 to A.M.L.; DEB-2311414 to A.L.A. and S.N.S.), and US Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture Research Capacity Fund (HATCH no. 7002993 to S.N.S. and no. 7004646 to W.K.P.)
Published In
Ecology Letters
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
12-1-2025
Subjects
Climate change -- demographic models, Ecological forecasting, integral projection models, matrix model -- physiology, population growth, stochastic environment
Abstract
Predicting the effects of climate change on plant and animal populations is an urgent challenge for understanding the fate of biodiversity under global change. At the surface, quantifying how climate drives the vital rates that underlie population dynamics appears simple, yet many decisions are required to connect climate to demographic data. Competing approaches have emerged in the literature with little consensus around best practices. Here we provide a practical guide for how to best link vital rates to climate for the purposes of inference and projection of population dynamics. We first describe the sources of demographic and climate data underlying population models. We then focus on best practices to model the relationships between vital rates and climate, highlighting what we can learn from mechanistic and phenomenological models. Finally, we discuss the challenges of prediction and forecasting in the face of uncertainty about climate-demographic relationships as well as future climate. We conclude by suggesting ways forward to build this field of research into one that makes robust forecasts of population persistence, with opportunities for synthesis across species.
Rights
© 2025 The Author(s). Ecology Letters published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
DOI
10.1111/ele.70283
Persistent Identifier
https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/44330
Publisher
Wiley
Citation Details
Williams, J. L., Angert, A. L., Compagnoni, A., Campbell, A., DeMarche, M. L., Evans, M. E. K., Fowler, J. C., González, E. J., Iler, A. M., Loesberg, J. A., Louthan, A. M., Martin, A. B., Moutouama, J. K., Nordstrom, S. W., Petry, W. K., Şen, B., Sheth, S. N., & Miller, T. E. X. (2025). Linking Climate and Demography to Predict Population Dynamics and Persistence Under Global Change. Ecology Letters, 28(12). Portico.