ORIGINAL PAPER Biodiversity monitoring: some proposals to adequately study species’ responses to climate change Virginie Lepetz Æ Manuel Massot Æ Dirk S. Schmeller Æ Jean Clobert Received: 28 April 2008 / Accepted: 3 April 2009 / Published online: 21 April 2009 Ó Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009 Abstract Climate change affects all levels of biology and is a major threat for biodi- versity. Hence, it is fundamental to run biodiversity monitoring programs to understand the effects of climate change on the biota and to be able to adjust management and conser- vation accordingly. So far, however, very few existing monitoring programs allow for the detection of climate change effects, as shown by a survey undertaken by the European project EuMon. Despite this shortcoming, several methods exist which allow to make inferences from existing data by integrating data across different monitoring programs: correlative analyses, meta-analyses and models. In addition, experiments are thought to be useful tools to understand the effects of climate change on plants and animals. Here, we evaluate the utility of these four main approaches. All these methods allow to evaluate long term effects of climate change and make predictions of species’ future development, but they are arguable. We list and compare their benefits and inconveniences, which can lead to uncertainties in the extrapolation of species responses to global climate change. Indi- vidual characteristics and population parameters have to be more frequently monitored. The potential evolution of a species should be also modelled, to extrapolate results across V. Lepetz Á D. S. Schmeller Á J. Clobert Station d’Ecologie Expe ´rimentale du CNRS a ` Moulis, USR 2936, 09200 Saint Girons, France V. Lepetz e-mail: virginie.lepetz@EcoEx-Moulis.cnrs.fr M. Massot UPMC University-Paris 06, UMR 7625 E ´ cologie & E ´ volution, 75005 Paris, France M. Massot CNRS, UMR 7625 E ´ cologie & E ´ volution, 75005 Paris, France M. Massot E ´ cole Normale Supe ´rieure, UMR 7625 E ´ cologie & E ´ volution, 75005 Paris, France M. Massot (&) Laboratoire Ecologie-Evolution, Universite ´ Pierre et Marie Curie-Paris 6, CNRS UMR 7625, Quai Saint Bernard, 75252 Paris cedex 05, France e-mail: mmassot@snv.jussieu.fr 123 Biodivers Conserv (2009) 18:3185–3203 DOI 10.1007/s10531-009-9636-0