Tropical forests in the Americas are changing too slowly to track climate change

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By Jesús Aguirre-Gutiérrez et al, Science. 

Editor's Summary: Species are expected to shift their ranges as the climate changes, but shifts may not occur fast enough, especially for immobile species such as plants. Two papers in this issue assess the degree to which plant species are tracking climate change in the American tropics, where data availability has constrained inference. Ramírez-Barahona et al. show that in Mesoamerican cloud forests, climate change and deforestation together have led to a mean upward shift in species ranges since 1979, mainly due to contracting lower range edges. In tropical forests across the Americas, Aguirre-Gutiérrez et al. found that tree traits are not shifting fast enough to track climate change based on trait-climate relationships, with smaller shifts in montane forests. —Bianca Lopez. 

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