Will amphibians survive until the end of the 20th century?

March 7th, 2025 4 PM CET/10 AM EST (check here other time zones)

Institute of Environmental Sciences, Jagiellonian University, Kraków (Poland)

School of Biological, Environmental and Earth Sciences, University of New South Wales, Sydney (Australia)

 See the webinar at https://youtu.be/jNxyxR1djCg

Amphibians are the most threatened vertebrates, yet their resilience to rising temperatures remains poorly understood. This is primarily because knowledge of thermal tolerance is taxonomically and geographically biased, compromising global climate vulnerability assessments. In my talk I will introduced a novel approach: a phylogenetically-informed data imputation to predict the heat tolerance of 60% of amphibian species. The method allowed me and my colleagues to assess the vulnerability of amphibians to daily temperature variation in thermal refugia. We found that 104 out of 5203 species (2%) are currently exposed to overheating events in shaded terrestrial conditions. Despite accounting for heat tolerance plasticity, a 4°C global temperature increase would create a step-change in impact severity, pushing 7.5% of species beyond their physiological limits. In the Southern Hemisphere, tropical species encounter disproportionally more overheating events, while non-tropical species are more susceptible in the Northern Hemisphere. These findings challenge evidence for a general latitudinal gradient in overheating risk and underscore the importance of considering climatic variability in vulnerability assessments. We provide conservative estimates assuming access to cool shaded microenvironments. Therefore, the impacts of global warming will likely exceed our projections. The microclimate-explicit analyses I will present demonstrate that vegetation and water bodies are critical in buffering amphibians during heat waves. Immediate action is needed to preserve and manage these microhabitat features.

Biosketch:

Evolutionary biologist, graphic designer, poet. He worked at universities in Zurich, Uppsala, and the University of New South Wales in Sydney. He is currently employed at the Jagiellonian University as associate professor and UNSW in Australia as adjunct senior lecturer. His research focuses on bird evolution, organismal plasticity in response to climate change, and the biological significance of color and color vision. He is also a biostatistician, developing new method in meta-analysis and comparative studies. He is the author of several books for both adults and children, including the report Czarne lato. Australia płonie (Black Summer. Australia Burns), a children’s book Amory Zaloty Podboje – historie o rozmnażaniu zwierząt (Love Courtship Conquests – the stories on animal sex) the coming Gęsi odpoczywają na Gotlandii (Geese rest on Gotland).

EvoKE webinars are held on the first Friday of every month at 4 PM CET/10 AM EST