Tackling extremes: challenges for ecological and evolutionary research on extreme climatic events

Summary Extreme climatic events ( ECE s) are predicted to become more frequent as the climate changes. A rapidly increasing number of studies – though few on animals – suggest that the biological consequences of ECE s can be severe. However, ecological research on the impacts of ECE s has been limited by a lack of cohesiveness and structure. ECE s are often poorly defined and have often been confusingly equated with climatic variability, making...