California has been going through a drought for about 3 years now, with 2013 being the driest year on record. Read original article: Yikes! California’s extreme drought could last "a decade or more", 2014 driest year in a century ; ; ;
Birds, reptiles, amphibians, and many other animals may not be able to adapt to rising temperatures. phrakt/Flickr If you live near water in the American southeast, you may have run across the green tree frog—or at least heard the species as it croaks (in a sound that kind of resembles rapid fire quacking). It’s a small frog that’s often found in pet stores. It’s the state amphibian of Louisiana and Georgia. And it’s one of many species of amphibians, reptiles, birds and even mammals that may be incapable of evolving fast enough to keep up with what global warming has in store. That’s the upshot of a new study in the journal Ecology Letters, whose authors used a vast body of data on 540 separate species’ current climatic “niches,” and their evolutionary histories of adapting to different conditions, to determine whether they can evolve fast enough to keep up with the changing climate. More specifically, the study examined “climatic niche evolution,” or how fast organisms have adapted to changing temperature and precipitation conditions in their habitats over time. Under normal circumstances, the answer is very slowly. On average, the study found that animals adapted to temperature changes at a rate of less than 1 degree Celsius (or 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) per million years. By contrast, global warming is expected to raise temperatures on the order of 4 degrees Celsius (or 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) in the next 100 years. “It seems like climate change is too fast, relative to how quickly the climatic niches of species typically evolve,” explains evolutionary biologist John Wiens of the University of Arizona in Tucson, who conducted the research along with a colleague at Yale University. Take the green tree frog. According to data provided by Wiens, the annual mean temperature in the species’ range across the U.S. Southeast is about 66 degrees Fahrenheit. For its closely related “sister” species the barking tree frog, meanwhile, it’s 65.3 degrees. The two species diverged some 13.4 million years ago, and their common ancestor is estimated to have lived in mean climatic conditions somewhere in between these two numbers, at 65.5 degrees. The rate of evolutionary change in response to temperatures for these frogs is therefore extremely slow—”about 100,000 to 500,000 times slower than the expected rate of climate change within the range of the species from 2010 to 2100,” says Wiens. Even if you take a species that evolved much more rapidly in relation to changing temperatures, the conclusion remains the same. The species still didn’t change fast enough in the past for scientists to think that it can evolve to keep up with global warming in the future. An example of a faster evolving species would be the Northern banded newt, which lives at relatively high altitudes in a range that spans from Russia to Turkey. Annual mean temperatures in its habitat are about 50.4 degrees Fahrenheit; but for a closely related species, the Southern banded newt, the average temperature is vastly different—65.7 degrees. The two species’ common ancestor is estimated to have lived only 350,000 years ago, amid mean temperatures of about 59.5 degrees. Adaptation to new climatic conditions among these newts thus happened much faster than among tree frogs—“but still about 1,600 to 4,700 times slower” than the kind of changes we expect from global warming, according to Wiens. In the new paper, Wiens and his co-author apply a similar analysis to several hundred other species, ranging from cranes to crocodiles and from hawks to turtles. And none adjusted to temperatures in the evolutionary past at anything like the rate at which temperature change is now coming. This does not mean that each and every species will go extinct. Some may shift their ranges to keep up with favorable temperatures. Some may perish in certain locales but not others. And some may find a means of coping in a changed environment. Just because these species have never experienced what climate change is about to throw at them doesn’t prove that they’re incapable of surviving it. Nonetheless, the new research as a whole validates a striking statement made recently by the renowned climate scientist Michael Mann of Penn State University. At a Climate Desk Live event in May, Mann remarked that there is “no evidence” from the planet’s past to suggest that life can adapt to changes as rapid as the ones we’ve now set in motion. Wiens’ data add an exclamation point to Mann’s statement. And it also raises an unavoidable question: What is going to happen to the species responsible for all of this, namely, humans? “Humans will be fine,” says Wiens, “because we have things like clothes and air conditioning.”
Uno de los escritores más queridos y autor de varios bestsellers nos lleva hacia las preguntas más intrigantes e intratables que la ciencia busca responder. Con este título ganó el Premio Aventis de divulgación científica y fue finalista del Premio Samuel Johnson . ¿Puede un solo libro convertirse en la perfecta introducción para adentrarse en […]
La explicación del Mapa de la Conciencia es una introducción a los niveles de la conciencia humana y a los campos de energía asociados. El doctor Hawkins dedicó más a veinte años de investigación a clasificar, ordenar y definir una serie de valores, actitudes y emociones que se corresponden con los niveles de conciencia. Con […]
¿Viola la vida las leyes de la física? ¿Las respeta, en cambio, aunque no encuentre en ellas la explicación de su existencia y de su evolución? ¿Faltan aún leyes en la física, precisamente las necesarias para describir la vida? ¿Qué es lo característicamente vivo? O dicho más simplemente, ¿qué es la vida? Quizá sea ésta […]
Descubre cómo funciona tu cerebro y aprende técnicas sencillas que te darán el poder para influir sobre tu mente y tus capacidades. EL CEREBRO SE ENTRENA: ¡DESARROLLA EL TUYO AL MÁXIMO! Desde respirar —pasando por comer o dormir— hasta la capacidad para razonar, para enamorarnos o para discutir con alguien, todo lo que hacemos pasa […]
Entre el Electromagnetismo y la Mecánica newtoniana existe una fórmula de bisagra: la teoría de la relatividad especial y general. La importancia del nuevo marco planteado por Albert Einstein se entiende por lo siguiente: la percepción del tiempo y el espacio es relativa al observador. ¿Qué significa esto? Si usted viaja a una velocidad mayor […]
El origen de las especies —título original en inglés: On the Origin of Species— es un libro de Charles Darwin publicado el 24 de noviembre de 1859, considerado uno de los trabajos precursores de la literatura científica y el fundamento de la teoría de labiología evolutiva.
Don't simply show your data—tell a story with it! Storytelling with Data teaches you the fundamentals of data visualization and how to communicate effectively with data. You'll discover the power of storytelling and the way to make data a pivotal point in your story. The lessons in this illuminative text are grounded in theory, but […]
Libro sobre la teoría de la evolución del hombre Libro sobre la teoría de la evolución centrada en la evolución humana del científico y naturalista Charles Darwin. Es el segundo libro sobre la teoría de la evolución de Charles Darwin, después de su libro de 1859, El origen de las especies. En El origen del […]
Cambia tu mente para cambiar tu vida: descubre la neurociencia que te enseña cómo reprogramar tu cerebro para alcanzar el bienestar. «Vignola no solo explica cómo funciona la plasticidad del cerebro, sino que también nos muestra cómo podemos usar nuestro comportamiento, nuestra atención y nuestros pensamientos para hacer cambios notables en nuestro cerebro». Mary-Frances O'Connor […]
NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • From the world's leading forest ecologist who forever changed how people view trees and their connections to one another and to other living things in the forest—a moving, deeply personal journey of discovery “ Finding the Mother Tree reminds us that the world is a web of stories, connecting […]
iTunes Store
ITUNES TV AND MOVIES
FTC Disclaimer
This website contains DreamHost affiliate links. This means I may earn a commission if you purchase DreamHost services through my link.
Sustainable Luxury
Clean Water
Spring is for Gardening
Green Power
Green Energy
Aero Garden
Natural Pest Control
FTC Disclosure
Greenenergy may receive remuneration from the advertisers on this site.