Professor Nigel Andrew

This chapter identifies the way climate change responses that have been carried out to date with an emphasis on transplant experiments including: adaptation to a warmer climate; potential of range shifts; changes in phenology; shifts in species interactions; disentangling genotypic and phenotypic responses; and shifts in communities. Transplant experiments can be useful tools to experimentally investigate the potential of pole‐or upwards range expansion, equator wards range contraction or contractions on both ends. To investigate the role of plant‐insect interactions in driving range dynamics, plant species can be transplanted within the current range and beyond into the expanding range; impacts of the main herbivores can then be investigated over time and under natural field conditions. While field transplant experiments are very time‐ and labour‐intensive and relatively rarely used, they offer a valuable complement to other commonly used approaches to study climate change, including species distribution modelling, observations along gradients and glasshouse experiments.