Forecasting how climate change will impact biological systems represents a grand challenge for biologists. However, climate change biology lacks an effective framework for anticipating and resolving uncertainty. Here, we introduce the concept of climate change wildcards: biological or bioclimatic processes with a high degree of uncertainty and a large impact on our ability to address the biotic consequences of climate change. Wildcards may occur at multiple points in the progression of research—from understanding, to predicting, to forecasting biological responses. Our understanding of biological responses is limited by the components and processes we exclude to make research tractable. Our ability to predict biological responses often requires integration between biological levels of organization, across multiple stressors, and from specific cases to general systems. However, these types of integration can be dramatically affected by, respectively, differences between biological levels in their critical points, nonadditivity of the effects of different stressors, and historical and geographic contingency. Finally, our ability to forecast biological responses to climate change requires incorporating climatic projections in bioclimatic models. Such forecasts are vulnerable to the compounding of biological and climatic uncertainty, especially when biological responses occur in novel areas of bioclimatic parameter space. Both biological responses and climate change are dynamic processes; the potential of biological systems to be buffered against or rescued from the effects of climate change depends on the relative timing of biological and climatic effects—one of the least predictable aspects of both systems. In sum, our framework identifies stress points in the research process where we should anticipate and forestall wildcards. Focusing on universal currencies, like energy and elements, and universal structures, like functional traits and ecological networks, will improve our ability to generalize results. Most importantly, by modeling and communicating uncertainty, climate change biology can identify critical foci for future research.

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气候变化生物学中的通配符

预测气候变化将如何影响生物系统对生物学家来说是一个巨大的挑战。然而，气候变化生物学缺乏预测和解决不确定性的有效框架。在这里，我们引入了气候变化通配符的概念：具有高度不确定性并对我们应对气候变化的生物后果的能力产生重大影响的生物或生物气候过程。通配符可能出现在研究进展的多个阶段——从理解到预测，再到预测生物反应。我们对生物反应的理解受到我们排除的组件和过程的限制，以使研究易于处理。我们预测生物反应的能力通常需要在组织的生物水平之间进行整合，跨越多个压力源，并从特定案例到一般系统。然而，这些类型的整合可能分别受到临界点生物水平差异、不同压力因素影响的不可加性以及历史和地理偶然性的显着影响。最后，我们预测对气候变化的生物反应的能力需要在生物气候模型中结合气候预测。这种预测容易受到生物和气候不确定性的影响，特别是当生物反应发生在生物气候参数空间的新区域时。生物反应和气候变化都是动态过程；生物系统缓冲或免于气候变化影响的潜力取决于生物和气候影响的相对时间——这两个系统最不可预测的方面之一。总之，我们的框架确定了研究过程中的压力点，我们应该预测和阻止通配符。关注通用货币，如能源和元素，以及通用结构，如功能特征和生态网络，将提高我们概括结果的能力。最重要的是，通过建模和传达不确定性，气候变化生物学可以确定未来研究的关键焦点。像能量和元素，以及通用结构，像功能特征和生态网络，将提高我们概括结果的能力。最重要的是，通过建模和传达不确定性，气候变化生物学可以确定未来研究的关键焦点。像能量和元素，以及通用结构，像功能特征和生态网络，将提高我们概括结果的能力。最重要的是，通过建模和传达不确定性，气候变化生物学可以确定未来研究的关键焦点。