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A global synthesis of biodiversity responses to glacier retreat

Nature Ecology & Evolution volume 3, pages 1675–1685 (2019)Cite this article

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Matters Arising to this article was published on 30 March 2020

Abstract

Glaciers cover about 10% of the Earth’s land area but they are retreating rapidly and many will disappear within decades. Glacier retreat is a worldwide phenomenon increasing the threat to water resources, biodiversity and associated ecosystem services for hundreds of millions of people, mostly in developing countries. Our understanding of the ecological consequences of glacier retreat has improved significantly in the past decade, but we still lack a comprehensive framework for predicting biodiversity responses to glacier retreat globally, across diverse habitats and taxa. By conducting a global meta-analysis of 234 published studies, including more than 2,100 biodiversity surveys covering marine, freshwater and terrestrial assemblages, we show here that taxon abundance and richness generally increase at lower levels of glacier influence, suggesting that diversity increases locally as glaciers retreat. However, significant response heterogeneity was observed between study sites and species: 6–11% of the studied populations, particularly in fjords, would lose out from glacier retreat. Most of the losers are specialist species, efficient dispersers, uniquely adapted to glacial conditions, whereas the winners are generalist taxa colonizing from downstream. Our global analyses also identify key geographic variables (glacier cover, isolation and melting rates, but not latitude or altitude) and species traits (body size and trophic position) likely to modulate taxon sensitivity to glacial retreat. Finally, we propose mechanistic diagrams for model development to predict biodiversity change following glacier retreat.

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Fig. 1: Global distribution of the biodiversity surveys analysed in this study.
Fig. 2: Population and community responses to the effects of glaciers in fjords, freshwaters and forefields.
Fig. 3: Population responses to glacier influence in fjords, freshwaters and glacier forefields by taxonomic group, trophic level and organism size.
Fig. 4: Physical forcing of biological processes in the three glacier-influenced ecosystems.

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Data availability

Data are available at https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/ZAREWT.

Code availability

Code from this study is available at https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/ZAREWT.

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Acknowledgements

We thank C. Randimbivololona and P. Bonneviot for drawing most of the icons in Figs. 3 and 4.

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  1. Irstea, UR RIVERLY, Centre de Lyon-Villeurbanne, Villeurbanne Cedex, France

    Sophie Cauvy-Fraunié

  2. Centre d’Ecologie Fonctionnelle et Evolutive, UMR 5175, CNRS, Université de Montpellier, Université Paul Valéry Montpellier, EPHE, IRD, Montpellier, France

    Olivier Dangles

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S.C.-F. and O.D. conceived the study, acquired the data and wrote the manuscript. S.C.-F. performed the analyses and constructed the figures.

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Supplementary Tables 1–5, sensitivity analysis and Fig. 1

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Cauvy-Fraunié, S., Dangles, O. A global synthesis of biodiversity responses to glacier retreat. Nat Ecol Evol 3, 1675–1685 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-019-1042-8

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