About this Research Topic
Climate change, as a dominant environmental issue worldwide, has raised increasing attention in the science community in recent years, particularly given its diversified impacts on ecosystems and animal behaviors. Long-term variations of paleoclimate and modern-time anthropogenic global warming influence the environment and ecosystems through changes in mean-state and extreme climate, coupled with numerous new chemical and physical conditions. In response to anthropogenic global warming, the world has seen an increase of more than 1°C from pre-industrial levels, along with rising frequency and intensity of extreme climate and natural hazards, changes in atmospheric CO2 concentrations, air pollution due to fossil fuel combustion, environmental degradation, biodiversity loss, etc. Moreover, paleoclimate variations have long-term, substantial impacts on the evolution of genes and species, dynamics of ecosystems, animal behaviors, and biodiversity in terms of range shifts, extinctions, and diversification on timescales from centuries to millions of years. Therefore, there is an increasing demand to understand changes in current and past climate, as well as the environmental, ecological, or genetic response to these climate effects, thus identifying emerging hotspots in this cross-disciplinary research area and shedding light on climate change adaptation and outlook from a new perspective.
Recent research has documented the widespread footprint of climate change from genes to species to biomes to animals and human beings. We have witnessed accumulating influences of paleoclimate and anthropogenic global warming, as well as extreme climate and natural disasters, on many aspects of the environment and ecosystem on Earth. Evolutionary adaptation to temperature extremes, for example, has been taking place in species, leading to specific genetic, morphological, and physiological adjustments in both aquatic and terrestrial systems. On a larger scale, climate change and related environmental issues induced by human activities substantially influence animal behavior and migration, range expansion and contraction, biodiversity loss, and ecological regime shifts. At different levels of the environmental, biological, or ecological system, climate change produces a variety of impacts at different spatial and temporal scales, which requires both innovative case studies and meta-analyses. In a nutshell, the primary goal of this Research Topic is to provide an overview of recent advances in the understanding of climate change, environmental challenges, and animal behaviors, particularly the response of the ecological system (e.g., at different levels from genes to community) to climate change, extreme events, and other environmental drivers.
This Research Topic covers a broad range of research targeting recent advances in climate change, environmental challenges, and animal behaviors, as well as cross-disciplinary research regarding the interaction between the three sub-topics. We are interested in, but not limited to, the following themes:
• Anthropogenic global warming, paleoclimate variation, and extreme climate change and prediction
• Climate-environment interactions under global warming or changes in atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gasses
• Genetics of climate change responses and impacts climate change on genetic adaptation
• Animal behavior and migration, range expansion and contraction, biodiversity loss, and ecological regime shifts related to climate change
• Environmental evaluations and interactions between climate and any other processes related to environmental toxicology, air/water pollution, radioactive materials, and heavy metals
• Innovative observational and experimental approaches, or statistical/modeling/dynamical methods including machine learning and AI techniques
Recent research has documented the widespread footprint of climate change from genes to species to biomes to animals and human beings. We have witnessed accumulating influences of paleoclimate and anthropogenic global warming, as well as extreme climate and natural disasters, on many aspects of the environment and ecosystem on Earth. Evolutionary adaptation to temperature extremes, for example, has been taking place in species, leading to specific genetic, morphological, and physiological adjustments in both aquatic and terrestrial systems. On a larger scale, climate change and related environmental issues induced by human activities substantially influence animal behavior and migration, range expansion and contraction, biodiversity loss, and ecological regime shifts. At different levels of the environmental, biological, or ecological system, climate change produces a variety of impacts at different spatial and temporal scales, which requires both innovative case studies and meta-analyses. In a nutshell, the primary goal of this Research Topic is to provide an overview of recent advances in the understanding of climate change, environmental challenges, and animal behaviors, particularly the response of the ecological system (e.g., at different levels from genes to community) to climate change, extreme events, and other environmental drivers.
This Research Topic covers a broad range of research targeting recent advances in climate change, environmental challenges, and animal behaviors, as well as cross-disciplinary research regarding the interaction between the three sub-topics. We are interested in, but not limited to, the following themes:
• Anthropogenic global warming, paleoclimate variation, and extreme climate change and prediction
• Climate-environment interactions under global warming or changes in atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gasses
• Genetics of climate change responses and impacts climate change on genetic adaptation
• Animal behavior and migration, range expansion and contraction, biodiversity loss, and ecological regime shifts related to climate change
• Environmental evaluations and interactions between climate and any other processes related to environmental toxicology, air/water pollution, radioactive materials, and heavy metals
• Innovative observational and experimental approaches, or statistical/modeling/dynamical methods including machine learning and AI techniques
Keywords: climate change and extremes, paleoclimate, environmental effects, animal behavior and evolution, ecological response
Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
