Stepping inside the niche : microclimate data are critical for accurate assessment of species' vulnerability to climate change

Global climate change represents a threat to biodiversity across multiple biomes and organizational scales [1]. In the face of this threat, robust estimation of species' vulnerability to climate change is necessary [2]. Species' vulnerability can be seen as a function of the environmental regimes which a species experiences in situ (its 'exposure') and its physiological and adaptive responses to this environment (its 'sensitivity') [2]. The use of inaccurate measures of exposure or sensitivity for creating vulnerability analyses can potentially lead to false inference and wasted conservation resources. Hence, we need to examine closely the analytical procedures used to derive estimates of exposure and sensitivity for species.