McCain said she and King were surprised by some of the findings. Overall the study suggests our large, charismatic fauna -- animals like foxes, elk, reindeer and bighorn sheep -- may be at more risk from climate change, she said. The thinking that all animals will respond similarly and uniformly to temperature change is clearly not the case. Basically small mammals can take advantage of microclimates while large animal cannot. Which actually seems intuitively backwards to me (and obviously surprising to the researchers) I would expect the smaller mammal species to be affected first with resulting changes in populations of indicator species which determine the health of a bio-region. But instead the changes in climate are going straight for the moose! Poor moose. wildbiology/research/New_study_shows_differences_in_mammal_responses_to_climate_change.asp
Posted on: Sat, 08 Mar 2014 07:35:39 +0000
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