ABSTRACT
Although the current episode of climate change is unique because it originates from human influence upon greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere (IPCC, 2007a), climate change is not a new phenomenon. The past c.10,000 years of the Holocene, in which human activities, especially agriculture, have shaped the land have been a period of relative climatic stability (Burroughs, 2005). For much of the rest of the approximate two million years of the Quaternary Period the climate has been much less stable. This means that species in Britain today have developed traits which allowed them to respond to past change in climate, not least by dispersing to new areas with favourable climate conditions as change occurred. Those which did not have not survived (Tallis, 1991).
