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      Moss stable isotopes (carbon-13, oxygen-18) and testate amoebae reflect environmental inputs and microclimate along a latitudinal gradient on the Antarctic Peninsula

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          Abstract

          The stable isotope compositions of moss tissue water (δ 2H and δ 18O) and cellulose (δ 13C and δ 18O), and testate amoebae populations were sampled from 61 contemporary surface samples along a 600-km latitudinal gradient of the Antarctic Peninsula (AP) to provide a spatial record of environmental change. The isotopic composition of moss tissue water represented an annually integrated precipitation signal with the expected isotopic depletion with increasing latitude. There was a weak, but significant, relationship between cellulose δ 18O and latitude, with predicted source water inputs isotopically enriched compared to measured precipitation. Cellulose δ 13C values were dependent on moss species and water content, and may reflect site exposure to strong winds. Testate amoebae assemblages were characterised by low concentrations and taxonomic diversity, with Corythion dubium and Microcorycia radiata types the most cosmopolitan taxa. The similarity between the intra- and inter-site ranges measured in all proxies suggests that microclimate and micro-topographical conditions around the moss surface were important determinants of proxy values. Isotope and testate amoebae analyses have proven value as palaeoclimatic, temporal proxies of climate change, whereas this study demonstrates that variations in isotopic and amoeboid proxies between microsites can be beyond the bounds of the current spatial variability in AP climate.

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          The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s00442-016-3608-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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          Stable isotopes in precipitation

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            Microclimatic challenges in global change biology.

            Despite decades of work on climate change biology, the scientific community remains uncertain about where and when most species distributions will respond to altered climates. A major barrier is the spatial mismatch between the size of organisms and the scale at which climate data are collected and modeled. Using a meta-analysis of published literature, we show that grid lengths in species distribution models are, on average, ca. 10 000-fold larger than the animals they study, and ca. 1000-fold larger than the plants they study. And the gap is even worse than these ratios indicate, as most work has focused on organisms that are significantly biased toward large size. This mismatch is problematic because organisms do not experience climate on coarse scales. Rather, they live in microclimates, which can be highly heterogeneous and strongly divergent from surrounding macroclimates. Bridging the spatial gap should be a high priority for research and will require gathering climate data at finer scales, developing better methods for downscaling environmental data to microclimates, and improving our statistical understanding of variation at finer scales. Interdisciplinary collaborations (including ecologists, engineers, climatologists, meteorologists, statisticians, and geographers) will be key to bridging the gap, and ultimately to providing scientifically grounded data and recommendations to conservation biologists and policy makers. © 2013 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
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              Retreating glacier fronts on the Antarctic Peninsula over the past half-century.

              The continued retreat of ice shelves on the Antarctic Peninsula has been widely attributed to recent atmospheric warming, but there is little published work describing changes in glacier margin positions. We present trends in 244 marine glacier fronts on the peninsula and associated islands over the past 61 years. Of these glaciers, 87% have retreated and a clear boundary between mean advance and retreat has migrated progressively southward. The pattern is broadly compatible with retreat driven by atmospheric warming, but the rapidity of the migration suggests that this may not be the sole driver of glacier retreat in this region.
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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                +44-1223-330218 , jr328@cam.ac.uk
                Journal
                Oecologia
                Oecologia
                Oecologia
                Springer Berlin Heidelberg (Berlin/Heidelberg )
                0029-8549
                1432-1939
                22 March 2016
                22 March 2016
                2016
                : 181
                : 931-945
                Affiliations
                [ ]British Antarctic Survey, High Cross, Madingley Road, Cambridge, CB3 0ET UK
                [ ]Geography, College of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Exeter, Exeter, EX4 4RJ UK
                [ ]Department of Plant Sciences, University of Cambridge, Downing Street, Cambridge, CB2 3EA UK
                Author notes

                Communicated by David R. Bowling.

                Article
                3608
                10.1007/s00442-016-3608-3
                4912596
                27003701
                5f94715f-3dcf-4806-89b4-cf8f2590176d
                © The Author(s) 2016

                Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.

                History
                : 22 May 2015
                : 8 March 2016
                Funding
                Funded by: FundRef http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100000270, Natural Environment Research Council;
                Award ID: NE/H014896
                Award ID: NE/H014896
                Award ID: NE/H014896
                Award ID: NE/H014896
                Award Recipient :
                Categories
                Global Change Ecology–Original Research
                Custom metadata
                © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2016

                Ecology
                climate change,precipitation,water line,assemblage,microtopography
                Ecology
                climate change, precipitation, water line, assemblage, microtopography

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