Organismal traits interact with environmental variation to mediate how species respond to shared landscapes. Thus, differences in traits related to dispersal ability or physiological tolerance may result in phylogeographic discordance among co‐distributed taxa, even when they are responding to common barriers. We quantified climatic suitability and stability, and phylogeographic divergence within three reed frog species comple...

Aim Climate change threatens biodiversity in all ecosystems, and major shifts in species distributions are expected. Freshwater ecosystems are considered particularly vulnerable due to the ectothermic physiology of most freshwater species and their limited habitat extent and capacity to track climate trends. In this study, we examined what broad patterns in freshwater riverine species turnover might be expected under climate c...

Climate change may drastically alter patterns of species distributions and richness, but predicting future species patterns in occurrence is challenging. Significant shifts in distributions have already been observed, and understanding these recent changes can improve our understanding of potential future changes. We assessed how past climate change affected potential breeding distributions for landbird species in the contermi...

The recent commentary by Woinarski (2014, Global Ecology and Biogeography , doi: 10.1111/geb.12165) disagreed with our conclusions on the correlates of decline in the marsupials of tropical A ustralia (Fisher et al., 2014, Global Ecology and Biogeography , 23 , 181–190). We compared traits of species that were associated with range decline in southern and northern A ustralia. We found that habitat structure, climate and body s...

Aim Our aims were to identify centres of endemism and to infer whether these areas have functioned as refugia for subtropical rain forest plants through historical climate fluctuations. Location Subtropical eastern A ustralia (23–33° S; 145–155° E). Methods We collated 25,000 records of 179 endemic rain forest plants to identify geographical areas with unusually high concentrations of endemic taxa and range‐restricted endemics...

Aim A third of all modern (after 1500) mammal extinctions (24/77) are Australian species. These extinctions have been restricted to southern A ustralia, predominantly in species of ‘critical weight range’ (35–5500 g) in drier climate zones. Introduced red foxes ( V ulpes vulpes ) that prey on species in this range are often blamed. A new wave of declines is now affecting a globally significant proportion of marsupial species (...

Montane tropical rainforests are critically important areas for global bird diversity, but are projected to be highly vulnerable to contemporary climate change. Upslope shifts of lowland species may partially offset declines in upland species but also result in a process of lowland biotic attrition. This latter process is contingent on the absence of species adapted to novel warm climates, and isolation from pools of potential...

Species that are tolerant of broad environmental gradients may be less vulnerable to epizootic outbreaks of disease. Chytridriomycosis, caused by the fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, has been linked to extirpations and extinctions of amphibian species in many regions. The pathogen thrives in cool, moist environments, and high amphibian mortality rates have commonly occurred during chytridiomycosis outbreaks in amphibian...

The purpose of this data set was to compile distributional, general life‐history characteristics and phylogenies for Australian tropical rain forest vertebrates to inform a wide range of comparative studies on the determinants of biodiversity patterns and to assess the impacts of global climate change. We provide three distinct data sets: (1) a table of species‐specific distributional and life‐history traits for 242 vertebrate...