139-172 PPG_094081.indd

Understanding climate change and its potential impact on species, populations and communities is one of the most pressing questions of twenty-fi rst-century conservation planning. Palaeobiogeographers working on Cenozoic fossil records and other lines of evidence are producing important insights into the naturally dynamic nature of climate and the equally dynamic response of species, populations and communities. Climatic variations ranging in length from multimillennia to decades run throughout the palaeo-records of the Quaternary and earlier Cenozoic and have been shown to have had impacts ranging from changes in the genetic structure and morphology of individual species, population sizes and distributions, community composition to large-scale biodiversity gradients. The biogeographical impacts of climate change may be due directly to the effects of alterations in temperature and moisture on species, or they may arise due to changes in factors *Author for correspondence. Email: [email protected] 139-172 PPG_094081.indd 139 6/4/2008 1:33:42 PM Process Black 140 Progress in Physical Geography 32(2)