Climate change is causing more local extinctions among temperate species than tropical ones, challenging earlier expectations that tropical biodiversity would be more vulnerable.
A new Nature Climate Change study found climate-linked local extinctions in 49% of temperate species surveyed, compared with 33% of tropical species.
Researchers analysed 5,151 plant and animal species across 39,157 sites in terrestrial, marine and freshwater habitats.
The study found that range shifts into cooler areas are not compensating for local losses, meaning many species are losing populations faster than they are gaining new ones.
Climate change is causing more local extinctions among temperate species of plants and animals than tropical ones, challenging earlier scientific expectations that tropical species would be more vulnerable, according to a new study.
The findings, published in the journal Nature Climate Change on June 18, 2026, show that climate-linked local extinctions were significantly more frequent among temperate species, affecting 49 per cent of surveyed species, compared with 33 per cent of tropical species.
The study analysed a global dataset from resurvey studies covering 5,151 plant and animal species across 39,157 sites. Researchers said the dataset was five times larger than those used in previous studies and covered terrestrial, marine and freshwater habitats.
The findings suggest that range shifts into cooler areas are not compensating for local population losses, and that species’ survival will depend heavily on their ability to adapt to changing conditions. The researchers focused on “warm-edge” range limits, which is the lowest elevations or latitudes within a species’ range and where climate-driven local extinctions are expected to occur first.
“We found that 45 per cent of all 5,151 species underwent local extinction at the warmest sampled edges of their ranges,” the authors wrote. This was similar to a previous analysis, based on 976 species, which found a 47 per cent rate.
The study found that local extinctions were more common among temperate species than tropical species. For terrestrial plants, extinction was more than twice as common among temperate species, at 45 per cent, compared with 18 per cent among tropical species.
Across habitat types, warm-edge local extinctions occurred in 43 per cent of terrestrial species. They were more frequent among freshwater species, at 50 per cent, though the difference was not statistically significant.
Marine species recorded the highest share, with local extinctions found in 56 per cent of species. Animals were also more affected than plants, with local extinctions recorded in 54 per cent of animal species compared with 39 per cent of plant species.
The researchers also found that temperate species had higher extinction rates even at the cooler edges of their ranges. This suggests that, for many temperate species, extinctions are not limited to the hottest parts of their range but are occurring more widely. This pattern reflects climate-linked biological responses rather than localised losses at warm range limits alone, the scientists said.
Higher sensitivity to warming, greater warming at higher latitudes, or both, may be contributing to more widespread local extinctions among temperate species, the study stated. For terrestrial and marine habitats, increases in mean annual temperature between surveys were strongly linked to local extinction risk.
Each 1 degrees Celsius (°C) increase in mean annual temperature increased the odds of warm-edge extinction by 85 per cent for terrestrial species and by 139 per cent for marine species, the study found. For freshwater species, declining rainfall was an important factor. A 100 millimetres decrease in annual rainfall increased the odds of extinction by 60 per cent, the study said. Increases in maximum temperatures and heatwave intensity contributed to local extinction among terrestrial and freshwater species.
They said the findings were consistent with evidence that warming and drying are significantly greater at higher latitudes.
“We found evidence supporting two hypotheses to explain why local extinction is more frequent in temperate than tropical species,” the authors observed. “First, terrestrial temperate species have a slightly higher frequency of extinction for the same level of large-scale climatic warming than tropical species. Second, there was greater warming at high latitudes, with greater warming leading to more frequent local extinction in all three habitats.”
One possible reason temperate species are more sensitive to temperature change is that mid- and high-latitude species may have lower physiological thermal-safety margins. Thermal-safety margins refer to the difference between the temperature limits an organism can tolerate and the extreme temperatures it experiences in its environment.
The researchers said temperate species may also be more vulnerable because of increased summer heat stress, which can reduce fitness, even if longer growing seasons and warmer winters benefit some species.
Gopal Murali, an evolutionary ecologist at the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, and lead author of the study, said climate-linked local extinctions across species’ ranges were observed only in temperate species. For tropical species, extinctions were more concentrated at the warm edge of their ranges. “One possible explanation is the difference in temperature gradients across elevational ranges,” Murali said.
“Tropical mountains offer a greater variety of temperatures over relatively short distances in elevation. This means that when conditions become too warm at lower elevations, populations higher up the mountain may still find suitable conditions. As a result, extinctions tend to be concentrated at the warm edge,” he added.
In contrast, Murali said, suitable temperatures may be harder to find elsewhere within the ranges of many temperate species because temperatures do not change as sharply with elevation as they do in the tropics. As a result, warming can affect populations across much of the range, not just those at the warm edge, he said.
The study also examined whether species were expanding into cooler areas as their existing habitats warmed. Murali said about 29 per cent of all species in the dataset showed cool-edge dispersal, meaning they had expanded their ranges into cooler regions. Among tropical species, the figure was 24 per cent.
But such movements were not enough to offset local losses, Murali said.
“One important distinction is that many previous studies quantified the rate of range shifts, whereas our analysis simply asked whether species had expanded into cooler regions or not,” he said. “The key finding is that these expansions were not common enough to offset local extinctions. While some species are successfully tracking changing climates, many are losing populations faster than they are gaining new ones.”
Murali said several barriers could be preventing species from moving fast enough. Suitable habitat may not be available in cooler areas. “Some species may be unable to disperse to those areas (new regions), while others may have nowhere suitable to go,” he said. In many cases, climate change may simply be happening too quickly for populations to keep pace.