Document Type
Article
Journal/Book Title/Conference
Functional Ecology
Author ORCID Identifier
Michael Stemkovski https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9854-887X
Joey R. Bernhardt https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1824-2801
Benjamin Wong Blonder https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5061-2385
John B. Bradford https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9257-6303
Kyra Clark-Wolf https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4584-0348
Laura E. Dee https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0471-1371
Margaret E. K. Evans https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3220-3382
Virginia Iglesias https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5732-3714
Loretta C. Johnson https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8989-7779
Abigail J. Lynch https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8449-8392
Sparkle L. Malone https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9034-1076
Booke B. Osborne https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4771-7677
Melissa A. Pastore https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7465-1418
Michael Paterson https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8526-9126
Malin L. Pinsky https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8523-8952
Christine R. Rollinson https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0181-7293
Oliver Selmoni https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0904-5486
Jason J. Venkiteswaran https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6574-7071
Anthony P. Walker https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0557-5594
John W. Williams https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6046-9634
Claire M. Zarakas https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9992-3785
Peter B. Adler https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4216-4009
Volume
39
Issue
8
Publisher
Wiley-Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Publication Date
6-23-2025
Journal Article Version
Version of Record
First Page
1923
Last Page
1939
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Abstract
1. Ecological responses to climate change occur across vastly different time-scales, from minutes for physiological plasticity to decades or centuries for community turnover and evolutionary adaptation. Accurately predicting the range of ecosystem trajectories will require models that incorporate both fast processes that may keep pace with climate change and slower ones likely to lag behind and generate disequilibrium dynamics. However, the knowledge necessary for this integration is currently fragmented across disciplines.
2. We develop ‘ecological acclimation’ as a unifying framework to emphasize the similarity of dynamics driven by processes operating on dramatically different time-scales and levels of biological organization. The framework focuses on ecoclimate sensitivities, measured as the change in an ecological response variable per unit of climate change. Acclimation processes acting at different time-scales cause these sensitivities to shift in magnitude and even direction over time.
3. We highlight shifting ecoclimate sensitivities in case studies from diverse ecosystems, including terrestrial plant communities, coral reefs and soil microbiomes.
4. Models predicting future ecosystem states inevitably make assumptions about acclimation processes; these assumptions must be explicit for users to evaluate whether a model is appropriate for a given forecast horizon. Similarly, decision frameworks that clearly account for multiple acclimation processes and their distinct time-scales will help natural resource managers plan for ecological impacts of climate change from years to many decades into the future.
Recommended Citation
Stemkovski, M., Bernhardt, J. R., Blonder, B. W., Bradford, J. B., Clark-Wolf, K., Dee, L. E., Evans, M. E. K., Iglesias, V., Johnson, L. C., Lynch, A. J., Malone, S. L., Osborne, B. B., Pastore, M. A., Paterson, M., Pinsky, M. L., Rollinson, C. R., Selmoni, O., Venkiteswaran, J. J., Walker, A. P., … Adler, P. B. (2025). Ecological acclimation: A framework to integrate fast and slow responses to climate change. Functional Ecology, 39, 1923–1939. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2435.70079