Climatic niche groups: A novel application of a common assumption predicting plant community response to climate change

We provide robust experimental evidence that using climatic niches - commonly applied in BEMs - is a valid approach for eliciting community changes in response to climate change. However, we also argue that additional empirical information needs to be gathered using experiments in situ to correctly assess community vulnerability. Climatic Niche Groups used in this way, may therefore provide a powerful tool and directional testing framework to generalise and compare climate change impacts across habitats.