An international team of scientists reviewed more than 10,000 published climate change studies and has reached a sobering conclusion.
An international team of scientists reviewed more than 10,000 published climate change studies and has reached a sobering conclusion. Birds and other animals cannot adapt fast enough to keep pace with climate change, throwing species survival in doubt. These results were recently published in the scientific journal Nature Communications.
"Our research focused on birds because complete data on other groups were scarce," says lead author Viktoriia Radchuk at the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research in Berlin. She adds: "We demonstrate that in temperate regions, the rising temperatures are associated with a shift in the timing of biological events to earlier dates."
These biological events include hibernation, reproduction, and migration. Changes in body size, body mass, or other physical traits have also been associated with climate change but—as confirmed by this study—show no systematic pattern.
Read more at Cornell University
Image: Song Sparrow is one of the species considered in an international review of climate change studies. (Credit: Jennifer Taggart, courtesy Cornell Lab of Ornithology)
