Extinction risk controlled by interaction of long-term and short-term climate change

A new study by Gregor Mathes, Manuel Steinbauer (Sports Ecology) and colleagues from the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg recently published in Nature Ecology & Evolution assesses the extinction risk from climate drivers targeting a major goal of conservation science. Interestingly, the authors include a long-term perspective of climate change by comparing synergistic palaeoclimate interaction (a short-term change on top of a long-term trend in the same direction) to antagonistic palaeoclimate interaction such as long-term cooling followed by short-term warming. Overall they find that synergistic palaeoclimate interaction increases genus-level extinction risk of arthropods, bivalves, cnidarians, echinoderms, foraminifera, gastropods, mammals and reptiles by up to 40%.