What determines species diversity is one of the top 25 questions pointed out by Science to be resolved by scientists in the coming decades. Understanding what shapes diversity will require a major interdisciplinary effort, involving paleontological interpretation, field studies, laboratory experimentation, genomic analysis, and effective statistical analyses. Together, these efforts will go a long way toward clarifying the history of life. Figuring out what shapes diversity could be important for understanding the nature of the wave of extinctions the world is experiencing and for determining strategies to mitigate it. In this context, I will summarize my recent research on the relationships between climate change, global diversity patterns and past and future extinctions, at different spatial and temporal scales under a multidisciplinary framework that encompasses disciplines as Climatology, Biogeography and Global Change Biology.

 

     Specifically, I firstly will show my results about future trends of climate change in mountains and a review of possible impacts, including preliminary results on a European assessment, also for the Pyrenees, about the future potential risk of extinction of mountain flora. Secondly, I will summarize also my findings about how current climates and past climate changes since the Late Pleistocene have shaped European diversity patterns and also how scale and human impacts affect the altitudinal patterns of species richness. Thirdly, I will show my recent research about how past climate changes and humans have affected to the extinction of Quaternary megafauna, with the example of the woolly mammoths. I will finish the seminar summarizing my current and future research about how to learn from the past to improve future projections of climate change impacts in biodiversity under a collaborative framework that includes researchers working in ecophysiology, ancient DNA and paleoecology.