Species Distribution & Change
Explain how environmental change (climate change, habitat loss, pollution) affects the distribution of species, including range shifts, local extinction, and invasive species
What a learner can do afterwards
- Describes at least two ways environmental change can affect species distribution
- Gives a real example of a species whose range has shifted due to climate change
- Explains what an invasive species is and how environmental change can enable invasions
- Discusses why some species are more vulnerable to environmental change than others
The lesson
A species' distribution is simply where it lives on Earth. That area is not fixed. When the climate warms, habitats shrink, or pollution spreads, a species can be forced to move into a new range, or its numbers can drop so low in one place that it disappears there completely. That second thing is called a local extinction, even if the species survives elsewhere.
The comma butterfly used to be found mainly in southern England. As average temperatures rose over the last 50 years, it spread roughly 220 kilometers further north, into areas that used to be too cold for it. Its range shifted because warmer conditions opened up further north, not because the butterflies chose to travel.
Environmental change can also open the door for invasive species: species that move into a new area, often with help from humans or changing conditions, and cause harm to the plants and animals already living there. As UK winters have grown milder, for example, the Asian hornet has been able to survive and spread further north than it could before, competing with native insects.
Not every species is equally at risk. Specialists, like a butterfly that only eats one type of plant, struggle when their exact conditions disappear. Generalists, and species that can travel long distances, often cope better because they can eat different foods or move to a new home.
Environmental change can shift where species live, wipe them out locally, or open the door to invasive newcomers, and specialists usually struggle the most.
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Where it sits
Where this leads
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8 questions wait behind this lesson, each with its answer explained. Every answer feeds the sky: stars light as they are learned, and dim when it is time to come back.