Energy availability, spatio-temporal variability and implications for animal ecology

Global environmental change, through anthropogenic activities and climatic changes, is promoting broad-scale alterations to energy availability across the world’s ecosystems. However, spatio-temporal variation in available energy is a key driver of animals’ life histories, movement patterns and abundance, thus shaping the global distribution of individuals and species. As such, there is an increasing need to understand how and where changes to energy availability will produce the greatest impacts on animal ecology, and ultimately on the distribution of biodiversity.