Climate-Driven Biodiversity Dynamics: Species Interactions, Adaptation, and Co-evolution

Climate change refers to long term shifts in temperatures and weather patterns, driven mainly by human interventions with nature. The impacts of climate change are far lasting and are expressively altering biodiversity, agricultural production, and food security. Climate change is affecting ecosystems at multiple levels, from individual organisms to their habitats and multitrophic interactions. As these impacts accumulate, they alter species and population dynamics, the composition of natural ecosystems, and the broad array of benefits that ecosystems provide to society and mankind. Understanding the direction and magnitude at which ecosystems get altered is vital, as it allows human communities to better anticipate these shifts and to implement adaptation actions as necessary. Although there is considerable evidence of species’ changes in morphology, phenology, and geographic distribution including the movement of species towards higher latitudes and altitudes, species extinctions, and the formation of novel communities current knowledge gaps persist regarding the resilience of ecosystems and the effectiveness of adaptation.
This Research Topic aims to collect research that assesses the impacts of climate change on species diversity and abundance, as well as on ecosystems and the evolutionary dynamics among organisms. It seeks to address the pressing questions related to how climate change is altering biodiversity, agricultural production, and food security, and to investigate how adaptation and coevolution can act as buffers against environmental change by potentially halting the loss of species and the disintegration of metacommunities. We encourage submissions that focus on both the measurement of these impacts and the evaluation and development of adaptation strategies and natural resource management techniques capable of mitigating the consequences of ongoing and future climate change.
To gather further insights into the direction and magnitude of ecosystem alteration and adaptation mechanisms, we welcome articles addressing, but not limited to, the following themes:
- Impacts of climate change on ecosystems, species, biodiversity, and food security
- Adaptation mechanisms in species and communities
- Climate-driven shifts in soil, plant, animal, and marine microbiomes
- Climate-driven phenological shifts across trophic levels
- Host pathogen co-evolution under changing climates
- Empirical and theoretical studies on co-evolution
- Eco-evolutionary dynamics at the organismal or molecular level
- Co-evolution and plant resistance to natural enemies
- Approaches mitigating climate change
- AI/ML approaches to predict species interactions under climate change
- Climate effects on disease emergence and transmission

Types of manuscripts: Research articles, Reviews, Short communications, Mini reviews

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Case Report
• Classification
• Clinical Trial
• Community Case Study
• Curriculum, Instruction, and Pedagogy
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• ... View all formats

Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.

Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Case Report
• Classification
• Clinical Trial
• Community Case Study
• Curriculum, Instruction, and Pedagogy
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• FAIR² DATA Direct Submission
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Policy and Practice Reviews
• Policy Brief
• Registered Report
• Review
• Study Protocol
• Systematic Review
• Technology and Code

Keywords: Climate change, Species, Diversity, Species extinction, Co-evolution, Interactions, Communities, Ecosystem, Molecular evolution, microbiome shifts, AI ML, Host Pathogen Interactions

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.