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Most climate change vulnerability assessments of species focus on characterizing the degree to which species are likely to be affected by changes in mean climatic conditions. Yet, there has been little progress in the explicit assessment of species vulnerability to extreme climatic events (ECEs) which have the potential to cause substantial environmental disturbance and potentially catastrophic declines of wildlife populations. Using a trait‐based approach, we assessed the relative vulnerability of populations of wild animal species to hurricanes, focusing on 25 terrestrial mammals at high risk of extinction in Mexico. Our assessment uses biological traits associated with heightened sensitivity (low vagility and territoriality) and low adaptive capacity (restricted diet and habitat specialization) in relation to their predicted exposure to hurricanes, based on records of occurrence of hurricanes in their geographical range over the past 45 years. We found that territoriality was present in most of the species assessed (n = 20) followed by habitat specialization (n = 6), low vagility (n = 6) and diet specialization (n = 3). Two subspecies of spider monkeys Ateles geoffroyi vellerosus and A. g. yucatanensis, two howler monkeys Alouatta pigra and Alouatta palliata mexicana and the silky anteater Cyclopes didactylus all emerged from this assessment as highly vulnerable to population declines from exposure to hurricanes. In the absence of any robust predictive framework for assessing risk to species from ECEs we suggest that the integration of data on hurricane exposure and species' intrinsic biology, as presented here, represents a coherent and informative basis for risk evaluation and the design of possible mitigation strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Author(s): G. M. Mace [1]; A. Balmford [2]; L. Boitani [3]; G. Cowlishaw [4]; A. P. Dobson [5]; D. P. Faith [6]; K. J. Gaston [7]; C. J. Humphries [8]; [...]

Extreme natural events such as cold waves, droughts, floods or hurricanes can drastically impact wildlife populations and are expected to become more frequent and more intense in the coming decades. When populations experience abnormally high declines within a short time interval due to such phenomena, the losses can be referred to as natural population die-offs ( NPDOs). Although such events have been observed and population declines have been recorded, there is currently little known about which species might be most affected. Using a database of 72 NPDOs from 31 terrestrial herbivorous mammals, we modelled the effects of four biological traits (adult body mass, foraging strategy, home-range area and territoriality) on the degree of population loss (severity) caused by extreme natural events. We found that the susceptibility to large NPDOs decreases with increased home-range size for a given body mass. Foraging strategy was also found to be significantly associated with NPDO severity, with grazers and mixed feeders experiencing larger declines than browsers. Our analyses moreover suggested that wide-ranging browsers might be less susceptible to large NPDOs than browsers with small home ranges. Identifying the traits shaping high biological sensitivity and/or limited adaptive capacity to extreme natural events can help us to identify those populations most likely to become increasingly vulnerable to NPDOs, allowing tailored interventions to be implemented to avoid local extinctions. This will be of the utmost importance for those populations already experiencing high levels of anthropogenic impact and distributed in regions where exposure to extreme natural events is expected to increase in the coming decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]