A biogeographic–macroecological perspective on the rising novelty of the biosphere in the Anthropocene

The concept of novel ecosystems has been discussed for over more than a decade to describe ecosystems that have an altered species composition and function, such that the community has crossed a threshold forbidding a return to its historical state. While spatial and temporal community compositional change has been well studied in biogeography, studies on novel ecosystems in a modern context are few and tend towards classifying novelty based on a static baseline. Given that the abiotic and biotic drivers of novelty are in a state of rapid change, and reaching levels unprecedented within the last hundred thousand to million years, defining such a threshold requires additional thought. Here, we discuss a biogeographical–macroecological perspective on novel ecosystems, exploring how such a threshold for novelty can be defined in an environment undergoing progressive global change and suggesting pathways through which the emergence and spread of novelty can be further explored, understood and managed.

• Publication year

  2023

• Venue

  Journal of Biogeography

• Publication date

  2023-11-27

• Fields of study

  Not labeled

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1111/jbi.14762
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

• Plant migration due to winter climate change: range expansion of tropical invasive plants in response to warming winters

  2023cited by this paper
• Plio-Pleistocene African megaherbivore losses associated with community biomass restructuring

  2023cited by this paper
• Megaherbivores provide biotic resistance against alien plant dominance

  2023cited by this paper
• Insect invasions track a tree invasion: Global distribution of black locust herbivores

  2023cited by this paper
• Shifts in ecosystem equilibria following trophic rewilding

  2023cited by this paper
• Smaller human populations are still not a necessary condition for biodiversity conservation: A response to Cafaro et al. (2023)

  2023cited by this paper
• Trophic rewilding can expand natural climate solutions

  2023cited by this paper
• The influence of human activity on predator-prey spatiotemporal overlap.

  2023cited by this paper
• Smaller human populations are neither a necessary nor sufficient condition for biodiversity conservation

  2023cited by this paper
• Exotic mammals and rewilding in the Neotropics

  2022cited by this paper
• Drivers of diversification in freshwater gastropods vary over deep time

  2022cited by this paper
• Learning takes time: Biotic resistance by native herbivores increases through the invasion process

  2022cited by this paper
• Dietary change in high-income nations alone can lead to substantial double climate dividend

  2022cited by this paper
• The direct drivers of recent global anthropogenic biodiversity loss

  2022cited by this paper
• Late Pleistocene megafauna extinction leads to missing pieces of ecological space in a North American mammal community

  2022cited by this paper
• Ecological complexity and the biosphere: the next 30 years

  2022cited by this paper
• Invasive alien species records are exponentially rising across the Earth

  2022cited by this paper
• The effects of defaunation on plants’ capacity to track climate change

  2022cited by this paper
• Whole community invasions and the integration of novel ecosystems

  2022cited by this paper
• Nativeness is not binary—a graduated terminology for native and non‐native species in the Anthropocene

  2022cited by this paper
• Nature-dependent people: Mapping human direct use of nature for basic needs across the tropics

  2021cited by this paper
• Future restoration should enhance ecological complexity and emergent properties at multiple scales

  2021cited by this paper
• Increased rates of dispersal of free-ranging cane toads (Rhinella marina) during their global invasion

  2021cited by this paper
• Global response of fire activity to late Quaternary grazer extinctions

  2021cited by this paper
• Equids engineer desert water availability

  2021cited by this paper
• People have shaped most of terrestrial nature for at least 12,000 years

  2021cited by this paper
• Proportion of Grassland at Landscape Scale Drives Natural Pest Control Services in Agricultural Landscapes

  2021cited by this paper
• Guiding principles for rewilding

  2021cited by this paper
• Underestimating the Challenges of Avoiding a Ghastly Future

  2021cited by this paper
• Thresholds for ecological responses to global change do not emerge from empirical data

  2020cited by this paper
• Accelerating homogenization of the global plant–frugivore meta-network

  2020cited by this paper
• Projecting the continental accumulation of alien species through to 2050

  2020cited by this paper
• Increased extinction in the emergence of novel ecological communities

  2020influential reference
• Introduced herbivores restore Late Pleistocene ecological functions

  2020cited by this paper
• Rewilding should be central to global restoration efforts

  2020influential reference
• Dominance

  2020cited by this paper
• The megabiota are disproportionately important for biosphere functioning

  2020cited by this paper
• A review of the critics of invasion biology

  2020cited by this paper
• Bright Spots in Coastal Marine Ecosystem Restoration.

  2020cited by this paper
• Residence time determines invasiveness and performance of garlic mustard (Alliaria petiolata) in North America

  2020cited by this paper
• Declining invasive grey squirrel populations may persist in refugia as native predator recovery reverses squirrel species replacement

  2020cited by this paper
• Anthropogenic climate change as a monumental niche construction process: background and philosophical aspects

  2020cited by this paper
• Body mass‐related changes in mammal community assembly patterns during the late Quaternary of North America

  2020cited by this paper
• Developing multiscale and integrative nature–people scenarios using the Nature Futures Framework

  2020influential reference
• The geography of biodiversity change in marine and terrestrial assemblages

  2019cited by this paper
• Patch‐scale biodiversity retention in fragmented landscapes: Reconciling the habitat amount hypothesis with the island biogeography theory

  2019cited by this paper
• A multidimensional framework for measuring biotic novelty: How novel is a community?

  2019cited by this paper
• Suilloid fungi as global drivers of pine invasions.

  2019cited by this paper
• Rewilding

  2019cited by this paper
• A triage framework for managing novel, hybrid, and designed marine ecosystems

  2019cited by this paper
• Safety margins and adaptive capacity of vegetation to climate change

  2019cited by this paper
• Niche Construction Theory and Human Biocultural Evolution

  2019cited by this paper
• The projected timing of abrupt ecological disruption from climate change

  2019cited by this paper
• Reorganization of surviving mammal communities after the end-Pleistocene megafaunal extinction

  2019cited by this paper
• Differing climatic mechanisms control transient and accumulated vegetation novelty in Europe and eastern North America

  2019cited by this paper
• Quantifying the impacts of defaunation on natural forest regeneration in a global meta-analysis

  2019cited by this paper
• Guiding principles.

  2018cited by this paper
• Evidence‐based restoration in the Anthropocene—from acting with purpose to acting for impact

  2018cited by this paper
• Proactive conservation and restoration of botanical diversity in the Anthropocene's "rambunctious garden".

  2018cited by this paper
• Pliocene and Eocene provide best analogs for near-future climates

  2018cited by this paper
• The Ecosystem Services and Biodiversity of Novel Ecosystems: A literature review

  2018cited by this paper
• Invisible megafauna

  2018cited by this paper
• Bayesian estimation of the global biogeographical history of the Solanaceae

  2017cited by this paper
• Merging paleobiology with conservation biology to guide the future of terrestrial ecosystems

  2017cited by this paper
• Island biogeography: Taking the long view of nature’s laboratories

  2017cited by this paper
• Legacies of Historical Human Activities in Arctic Woody Plant Dynamics

  2017cited by this paper
• Novel and designed ecosystems

  2017cited by this paper
• Ecological consequences of human niche construction: Examining long-term anthropogenic shaping of global species distributions

  2016cited by this paper
• Ecological disequilibrium drives insect pest and pathogen accumulation in non-native trees

  2016cited by this paper
• Bright spots : seeds of a good Anthropocene

  2016cited by this paper
• Persistent Disparities between Recent Rates of Habitat Conversion and Protection and Implications for Future Global Conservation Targets

  2016cited by this paper
• The asymmetry in the Great American Biotic Interchange in mammals is consistent with differential susceptibility to mammalian predation

  2016cited by this paper
• Mapping climatic mechanisms likely to favour the emergence of novel communities

  2016cited by this paper
• What's wrong with novel ecosystems, really?

  2016cited by this paper
• Large-scale impacts of multiple co-occurring invaders on monkey puzzle forest regeneration, native seed predators and their ecological interactions

  2016cited by this paper
• The influence of paleoclimate on present-day patterns in biodiversity and ecosystems

  2015cited by this paper
• The rise of novelty in ecosystems.

  2015influential reference
• No release for the wicked: enemy release is dynamic and not associated with invasiveness.

  2015cited by this paper
• Science for a wilder Anthropocene: Synthesis and future directions for trophic rewilding research

  2015cited by this paper
• A 2.5‐million‐year perspective on coarse‐filter strategies for conserving nature's stage

  2015cited by this paper
• Habitat fragmentation and species richness

  2015cited by this paper
• The theory behind, and the challenges of, conserving nature's stage in a time of rapid change

  2015cited by this paper
• Functional and phylogenetic similarity of alien plants to co-occurring natives.

  2014cited by this paper
• Managing the whole landscape: historical, hybrid, and novel ecosystems

  2014cited by this paper
• Using historical biogeography to test for community saturation.

  2014cited by this paper
• Native-species seed additions do not shift restored prairie plant communities from exotic to native states

  2014cited by this paper
• Novelty Trumps Loss in Global Biodiversity

  2014cited by this paper
• Novel ecosystems in the Anthropocene: a revision of the novel ecosystem concept for pragmatic applications

  2014cited by this paper
• Impacts of biological invasions: what's what and the way forward.

  2013cited by this paper
• Global imprint of climate change on marine life

  2013cited by this paper
• A greener Greenland? Climatic potential and long-term constraints on future expansions of trees and shrubs

  2013cited by this paper
• Islands: Where Novelty is the Norm

  2013cited by this paper
• Towards a Conceptual Framework for Novel Ecosystems

  2013cited by this paper
• Disequilibrium vegetation dynamics under future climate change.

  2013cited by this paper
• Defining Novel Ecosystems

  2013cited by this paper
• Valuing Novel Ecosystems

  2013cited by this paper
• Perspective: Is Everything a Novel Ecosystem? If so, do we need the Concept?

  2013cited by this paper
• Rethinking patch size and isolation effects: the habitat amount hypothesis

  2013cited by this paper
• Conservation in the Anthropocene: Biodiversity, Poverty and Sustainability

  2012cited by this paper
• The island species–area relationship: biology and statistics

  2012cited by this paper

• The making of novel ecosystems: A process‐based framework for measurement, analysis and application

  2026influential citation
• Widespread ecological novelty across the terrestrial biosphere

  2025cites this paper
• Expanding the Resist–Accept–Direct framework for developing nature‐based solutions and societal adaptations to biological invasions

  2025cites this paper
• Restoring fire regimes through rewilding.

  2025cites this paper
• Alien plants and novel ecosystems in the Greater Tropics

  2025cites this paper
• Embracing Change in Conservation to Protect Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functions in a Dynamic World

  2025cites this paper
• From open landscapes to forest refugia: human encroachment and climate change as drivers of red deer (Cervus elaphus) niche shifts over 21,000 years

  2025cites this paper
• A Conceptual Framework for Measuring Ecological Novelty

  2025cites this paper
• Drivers of Vegetation Structure Differ Between Proposed Natural Reference Conditions for Temperate Europe

  2025cites this paper
• The Late‐Quaternary Extinctions Gave Rise to Functionally Novel Herbivore Assemblages

  2025cites this paper
• Burrowing Into the Past: Extending Niche Space Models of Procellariiform Breeding Grounds by Merging Fossil and Historic Data

  2025cites this paper
• Unravelling the functional and phylogenetic dimensions of novel ecosystem assemblages

  2024influential citation
• Embracing plant–plant interactions—Rethinking predictions of species range shifts

  2024cites this paper
• Non-native palm affects arthropod communities and litter decomposition in an ongoing biome shift

  2024cites this paper
• Navigating ecological novelty towards planetary stewardship: challenges and opportunities in biodiversity dynamics in a transforming biosphere

  2024cites this paper
• Integrating functional traits into trophic rewilding science

  2024cites this paper