Climate Change and Animal Resilience: The Capacity to Adapt and the Limits of Persistence

Assessments of animal vulnerability to climate change often emphasise climatic exposure, yet the magnitude of environmental change alone cannot determine whether populations persist. Animals have evolved behavioural, physiological, phenological, and spatial responses that can sustain survival and reproduction under variable conditions, although their effectiveness depends on energetic demands, resource availability, ecological interactions, and other anthropogenic pressures. In this review, we develop an animal-centred mechanistic framework linking climatic conditions to individual responses, demographic outcomes, and wider ecological consequences. We examine how climatic variability and extremes interact with evolved characteristics, including body size, energy storage, and reproductive strategies, and how differences among individuals can either buffer populations or alter their composition through selective effects. Crucially, responses that maintain demographic performance under prevailing conditions may incur costs or erode the capacity to cope with subsequent change, while apparent population stability can conceal declining reproductive potential or altered ecological relationships. We therefore propose that climatic resilience depends not simply on whether animals can compensate for current conditions, but on whether they retain the biological and ecological capacity to respond to future challenges. This perspective provides a mechanistic basis for distinguishing vulnerability from exposure and identifying opportunities and limits for conservation intervention.