Trait-based Forecasting of Species Range Trajectories under Global Change

Global change is driving biodiversity loss at unprecedented rates, yet current biodiversity forecasts often rely on short-term or static data, limiting their ability to identify mechanisms and anticipate future dynamics. Extinction is a progressive process of population loss, and species’ current ranges reflect millennia of human impacts, but most models overlook these historical trajectories. This limits our capacity to disentangle drivers of decline and risks producing biased or misleading forecasts. TRAJECT (Trait-based Forecasting of Species Range Trajectories under Global Change) will overcome this limitation by developing an innovative interdisciplinary framework to link long-term range dynamics, trait–threat interactions, socio-economic contexts, and abundance trends across terrestrial vertebrates. First, I will conduct the first cross-taxa test of whether range contractions lead to “niche truncation” across climate and land-use dimensions, assessing patterns in mammals, birds, amphibians, and reptiles. Second, I will integrate socio-economic data, ecological traits, and threats into models of contraction trajectories in mammals to understand how vulnerabilities shift along the extinction process. Third, I will combine range dynamics with abundance data using novel Bayesian sequential models to generate robust forecasts of carnivore distributions under future climate and land-use scenarios. By uniting ecology, earth system science, social sciences, and advanced statistics, TRAJECT will deliver unprecedented insights into the mechanisms of biodiversity loss and identify robust hotspots of persistence and recovery. The results will directly inform IUCN and IPBES assessments, support EU biodiversity policy, and strengthen conservation strategies under the European Green Deal. The fellowship will position me at the forefront of biodiversity science, broaden my interdisciplinary expertise, and consolidate the foundations for academic independence.