Habitat context alters the pace of climate-driven community warming across terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems

Abstract

As global temperatures rise, ecological communities are increasingly dominated by warm-affiliated species, a process known as community warming or thermophilisation. Yet, why different taxa exhibit different rates of community warming remains unclear. Habitat composition and structure are likely drivers of this variation, as the ecological consequences of warming are filtered by local environmental conditions. Using over 40 years of monitoring data spanning terrestrial (birds, insects, plants) and freshwater (phytoplankton) communities, we show that habitat structure determines how strongly communities track warming. Forest cover systematically slows thermophilisation by reducing communities sensitivity to temperature change, whereas habitat heterogeneity has weak and variable effects that differ among ecosystems. Together, these results demonstrate that uneven thermophilisation arises from habitat-mediated differences in how communities respond to a shared climatic signal. Incorporating these effects is essential for improving predictions of biodiversity change under ongoing climate warming.