Climate change, causing a systematic and directional alteration on key abiotic niche dimensions, is resulting in individual level responses with cascading impact on populations, species and communities threatening the current adaptation, coadaptation and coevolutive equilibrium status of Earth ecosystems. Among individual level responses, those related to the cost of life (expressed as the metabolic costs) and to the overall individual energy budget are likely to have quantifiable metabolic theory-based implications both on other individual functional traits and on the higher levels of the ecological hierarchy. This includes influences on traits, such as individual perception of resource availability and related space use behavior, as well as on density and intensity of inter-individual interactions and competitive performances, species and communities carrying capacities, ecosystem processes and services. This ultimately challenges the benefits that humans derive from ecosystems processes and services.

Deeper knowledge and lower uncertainty on the quantitative responses of biodiversity and ecosystems to climate change are crucial to design effective actions and strategies to lessen their negative impacts on our social and economic growth.

Here, we discuss on the available data, their interconnections and implications at the highest level of ecological hierarchy. We propose a set of ecological indicators useful to detect early signs of ecological changes and to derive scenarios of change for both biodiversity and ecosystems and for the goods and services to our societies.