In their paper Malcolm et al. (2006) use climate-warming scenarios to estimate up to 43% loss of species within biodiversity hotspots. This prediction is based on a climate-envelope approach that assumes the distribution, and hence extinction, probability of every species is predicted by climate alone. We agree that global climate change will have substantial effects on biodiversity and will cause extinctions (Crowley & North 1990; Hoffman et al. 2003). Nevertheless, the climate-envelope approach presents a distorted estimate of extinction probabilities. Most notably, the approach does not consider evolution and therefore implicitly assumes that species cannot evolve in response to changing climate.

Current empirical evidence suggests that evolution is responsive to climate variation and occurs at rates that make it relevant for consideration of current and projected responses to climate change. . .

Citation: Skelly DK, Joseph LN, Possingham HP, Freidenburg LK , Farrugia TJ, Kinnison MT, Hendry AP. 2007. Evolutionary responses to climate change. CONSERVATION BIOLOGY 21 (5): 1353-1355