Great Tits Could be Wiped Out by Climate Change in Near Future
The Mighty Buzzard writes:
Species More Likely To Die Out With Rapid Climate Change:
The great tit and other birds can adapt to changes in their food supply as a result of climate change, but they run into trouble if the changes happen too quickly.
An ever warmer climate could be bad news for species that depend on stable and abundant access to food at certain times of the year.
"If changes happen too fast, species can become extinct," says Emily Simmonds, an associate professor at NTNU's Department of Biology.
[...] Several bird species depend on the abundance of larvae while their young are small. If the larvae supply peaks earlier in the spring than normal, there may simply be too little food for the hatchlings.
A warming climate can bring about changes like this. An earlier spring causes trees to leaf out earlier, which in turn causes the larvae that feed on the plants to hatch out earlier.
[...] The researchers found that populations of great tits would be guaranteed to become extinct by the year 2100 if the larvae appeared about 24 days earlier than the current norm in 2020. This also applies to populations that appear to be completely stable now.
[...] "If the conditions are such that greenhouse gas emissions are high, great tits won't always be able to keep up with the changes in the larvae supply," says Simmonds.
Journal Reference:
Emily G. Simmonds, Ella F. Cole, Ben C. Sheldon, et al. Phenological asynchrony: a ticking timebomb for seemingly stable populations? [open], Ecology Letters (DOI: 10.1111/ele.13603)
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.