From the University of Oregon
Mammals didn’t play by the rules of modeling on where they migrated to survive last ice age, says UO researcher
EUGENE, Ore. — Nov. 18, 2014 — Leave it to long-dead short-tailed shrew and flying squirrels to outfox climate-modelers trying to predict future habitats.
Evidence from the fossil record shows that gluttonous insect-eating shrew didn’t live where a species distribution technique drawn by biologists put it 20,000 years ago to survive the reach of glaciers, says University of Oregon geologist Edward B. Davis. The shrew is not alone.
According to a new study by Davis and colleagues, fossil records of five ancient mammalian species that survived North America’s last glacial period point to weaknesses in the use of ecological niche models and hindcasting to predict future animal and plant habitats. As a result, Davis says, the modeling needs to be fine-tuned for complexities that might be harvested from fossils.
Ecological niches use modern habitat distributions and climate; hindcasting adds predictive power by adding major past climate shifts into the models. That modeling combination — as seen in a 2007 study led by Eric Waltari, then of the American Museum of Natural History in New York — had the short-tailed shrew surviving the last ice age in mostly Texas and the Deep South. Conclusions drawn in other studies, Davis noted in the new study, also are biased toward southern locations for ice-age surviving mammals of the Pleistocene Epoch.
Short-tailed shrew, according to fossil records, did not live in the predicted ranges. Instead they lived across north central and northeast United States, closer to the glaciers and where they are widely found today.
“It’s almost as though it is living in all of the places that the model says it shouldn’t be living in and not in any of the places that the model says it should be living in,” said Davis, who also is manager of the paleontological collection at the UO Museum of Natural and Cultural History. “This suggests to me that whatever the model is keying on is not actually important to the shrew.”
Nor to the American marten, two species of flying squirrels and the Gapper’s red-backed vole, all of which lived mostly outside of predicted ranges, according to the fossil record. Northern and southern flying squirrels, the Davis study found, shared a compressed geographic region. It may be, Davis said, that some species tolerate competition under harsh conditions but separate when abundant resources are available.
Davis noted that an important but under-cited 2010 paper on rodents by Robert Guralnick of the University of Colorado and Peter B. Pearman of the Swiss Federal Research Institute also showed problems with hindcast projections. Those for lowland rodents in the last ice age did not hold up, but those for a higher elevation species did.
“Our findings say that we need to pay more attention to the potential problems we have with some of our modern methods, and the way that we can improve our understanding of how species interact with the environment,” said Davis, who added that his study was inspired by Waltari’s. “The way to improve our forecasting is to include data from the fossil record. It can give us more information about the environments that species have lived in and could live in.”
The findings appear in the November issue of the journal Ecography. In a special section of the journal, the Davis paper is packaged with four papers on research initially presented in a symposium on conservation paleobiogeography in 2013 at a biennial meeting of the International Biography Society. The Davis paper is co-authored by Jenny L. McGuire, now at Georgia Tech University, and former UO doctoral student John D. Orcutt, who is now at Cornell College in Iowa.
Davis and McGuire co-hosted the symposium, edited the special issue and penned an editorial that accompanies the five papers. Conservation paleobiogeography, Davis said, “is the idea that we can help people understand questions that arise from conservation needs using data from the fossil record.” Doing so, he said, may explain how species shift their ecological roles, or evolve, to survive amid abrupt changes in their habitats.
“Our paper raises questions about some of the work on projecting future ranges of mammals, and we suggest some directions forward,” Davis said. “We have concerns about the precision of the modeling techniques now being used. We don’t have any concerns about climate change happening and that it going to cause geographic range shifts for mammals and plants. The thing I want to do, as a scientist, is to have the best models possible so as we’re making informed decisions as a society.”
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And a link to the paper Ecological niche models of mammalian glacial refugia show consistent bias
Well, those critters best get with the models if they want any grant money…..
Scientists need to stop buying into the notion of storytelling and get back to falsifying.
Or admitting in memoirs as Gus Speth does here http://community-wealth.org/content/angels-river that all the environmental hyping is really just an excuse for collectivist economic and social transformations.
Uncle Karl, unfortunately, remains a lodestar for too many in their 21st century visions for all of us. Since we would decline, we get these created ‘catastrophe’ myths to force the vision anyway.
Speth is a lawyer, not a scientist. His admissions are irrelevant to anything but the spread of popular social delusions.
This is more in response to Duster – One should never confuse a degree with education. how a person earns a living may be degree oriented, but his brain, intellect, and thinking are not necessarily limited to that singular field. If that were the case – a degree was the only thing that sat your career field – there wouldn’t be any “climate scientists” to speak of.
Or perhaps mammals are much more adaptive than they thought. After all, a near hairless semi-aquatic primate living in equatorial swamps, lagoons and coastal waters adapted to live in Arctic lands beset by year round snows, hot and cold deserts, .lush forests, grassy steppes, below sea level, villages, cities and even managed to survive in vacuums.
And underwater
Good point – apply the model to us and hindcast.
Indeed a good point. Though humans have of course in culture a way to speed up adaptation considerably. Nevertheless hindcasting to predict the future will never be working in Living systems. Read the philosopher Bergson (Creative Evolution) to understand why (and read him carefully don’t look at what others have to say about him or put him under vitalism). The rule about hindcasting is also true for Clmate science as it is not really a closed system that is observed.
So did the shrew evolve to cope with the habitat as it changed? That would mean it wouldn’t need to move and follow the ecosystem.
It’s hard to tell from a fossil if the behaviour or genes have changed.
So does the model assume the species is constant? That would seem like a big assumption but hard to see how it can hind cast without it.
It probably adapted. Evolved means creating a new species, adapting is favoring certain traits which allow for better survivability in new circumstances.
There is also the possibility that the shrew did neither, already being able to handle both warm and cold conditions, much like my chickens which can live.in 100 degree heat and in winter survive in 10 degrees.
Evolution is a form of adaptation. Adaptation consists of a combination of three primary “tactics”: acclimatization, development (fetal and post-natal), and evolutionary changes (a selective filter). With humans we toss in cultural adaptation (mainly technological). Migration can be a form of adaptation, but leads to conflict with residents in new territory that are already well placed and outnumber the intruding population. Short lived species like fruit flies and mayflies mainly adapt through selective (evolutionary) means. Longer lived species have to depend more on acclimatization and developmental adaptation for survival. The shifts in red-blood cell production seen in human populations living at high altitudes are a combination of developmental and acclimatization adaptation.
Speciation is the cumulative result of selective (evolutionary) changes.
If the locations of the fossils have changed, then it would seem to be behavioural.
I am guessing it just means the temperature related habitat changes don’t determine where it lives. Back to the drawing board.
“This suggests to me that whatever the model is keying on is actually not important to the shrew.”
News flash the things your models key on are actually not important to ANYONE! !!
Obviously, those are the Pesky Little Denier Critters – Don’t they know that 97% of Climate Studies Related Mammals disagree 😉
“It’s almost as though it is living in all of the places that the model says it shouldn’t be living in and not in any of the places that the model says it should be living in,”
The model says exactly what it was told to say. GIGO
don’t confuse them with facts.
Rodents don’t listen to the IPCC. This is why they are such a successful species. 🙂
Missed the “/” to truncate italics after the quote.
Sigh. Another case of unnecessary ”me too”-research in Climate Science™. Everybody who has ever worked seriously with Pleistocene fossils knows this phenomenon perfectly well, it is known as “disharmonious faunas”, i. e. animals whose “ecological niches” don’t overlap today occur together. Classical examples are e. g. Lions and Caribou, Hyaenas and Muskox or Ptarmigan and Partridges.
There is three main reasons for this:
1. There are “extinct climates”, i. e. during ice-ages many areas had climates that do not occur anywhere on Earth today, and in these areas animals and plants occurred in combinations that do not occur anywhere today either.
2. The current “ecological niches” of animals often (=usually) do not cover their entire potential climatic range. For large animals this is often because they have been exterminated in (often large) parts of their natural range. Animals are also very often prevented from dispersing over their entire potential range by geographical barriers of various kinds (rivers, straits, forests, grasslands, mountains etc).
3. “Ecological niches” evolve like everything else. An animal species may be osteologically identical to a form that lived during the LGM 20,000 years ago, but its behaviour and ecological tolerance may well have changed.
By the way, floras work just the same. There were “disharmonious forests” too, e. g. much of south-central US was dominated by spruce-elm/oak forests, a combination that hardly occurs anywhere today, while much of Eurasia was “mammoth-steppe” a a dry treeless habitat with a (for us) weird mixture of southern sunlight-loving plants and arctic tundra species that never occur together nowadays. The low glacial CO2 levels were probably important for the composition of floras by making plants (particularly C3 species) much more susceptible to drought.
By the way, I completely and wholeheartedly agree that it is necessary to use both the fossil and the historical record to understand animal distribution. In contrast to what many “ecologists” seem to believe nothing is ever static or stable in nature, particularly not in the glaciation-dominated icehouse climate we are living in.
“The current “ecological niches” of animals often (=usually) do not cover their entire potential climatic range”
This is a very good point. People assume Lions are a tropical species because they currently are only found in the wild in sub Saharan Africa and India but we know from the fossil record that in the past they were native in climatic zones from Siberia and the Yukon to Peru. Moreover any zoo keeper will tell you that Lions do very well in cold climates at temperatures well below freezing.
The heat is ravaging polar bears in a Singaporean zoo.
http://therealsingapore.com/content/one-world-wildlife-singapore-zoo-still-neglecting-their-polar-bears
http://therealsingapore.com/sites/default/files/field/image/Screen%20Shot%202014-09-24%20at%206.06.21%20pm.png
I own a forest in upstate NY.
We have plenty of spruce, oak and before 1960, lots of elm trees, too. All of upstate NY is like this.
Illuminating – good to get the real biology / ecology perspective.
I saw in a recent documentary that much of north America had a rich ecosystem with abundant megafauna for the early part of the last glaciation. However the final 20k years or so when the glaciation intensified devastated this ecosystem and caused a number of extinctions. Maybe low CO2 also contributed to this baleful climate just prior to the Holocene.
Could increasing CO2 cause reforestation of some grasslands?
At the very least, the Last Glacial Maximum compressed climatic zones and reduced the areas of biomes, including those now extinct.
“At the very least, the Last Glacial Maximum compressed climatic zones and reduced the areas of biomes, including those now extinct”
It’s not that simple. Ice-ages don’t simply “compress climatic zones”. Desert and steppe areas are much larger during ice-ages. Forest areas mostly shrink and move.
PS I might add that using modern ranges to study conditions/distributions in the past do work fairly well for interglacial periods which had reasonably similar climate to the present one.
However this does not do much good in North America where Pleistocene chronology still isn’t good enough to consistently identify interglacials before the last one (Sangamonian).
Good comments. pretty much says all that needs to be said.
But I’m surprised that “using modern ranges to study conditions/distributions in the past do work fairly well for interglacial periods which had reasonably similar climate to the present one.”
A major river changing its course would have huge impacts… and over those timescales they must have, surely?
There were refugia in Alaska during the last ice age!
These were the world’s first climate refugees. 😉
publish or perish…
At least he showed how models are crap
Which is profoundly important.
Wouldn’t there be latitudinal onstraints to the synchronization of their breeding and hibernation cycles? Such would be largely unaffected by temperature.
@ur momisugly tty – but does insisting on historical accuracy miss the point ? Modern ranges have to be the ideal ones because as we all know The Earth had a perfect climate until humans started to mess with it. Isn’t the preservation/restoration of that perfect climate what CAGW is all about ?
well said and I believe the answer is …
…As a result, Davis says, the modeling needs to be fine-tuned for complexities that might be harvested from fossils….
What nonsense! Everybody knows, in post-modern science, that the observations have got to be adjusted to fit with the models…
So maybe they could get a grant to move the fossils to where they are supposed to be.
If the NA shrew are still in similar ranges to ice age ranges, then we haven’t recovered from the last ice age as much as these climate scientists think we have.
Good point.
Also, if we change the time scale of their models and run it backwards we will see, with certainty, that the little varmints will be established throughout a more northern range in the future.
Pick a random northern local, and when one of the little varmints shows up then we will have pinned down the exact day of the end of the current ice age.
Subsequent warming will then be irrefutable proof of AGW.
i think a mistake that a lot of these studies make is assuming that a plant/animal can only survive in one limited climate range. what if temperature changes and the plant/animal in question just keeps on keeping on? i dont think their vaunted models take that into account
Short-tailed shrew, according to fossil records, did not live in the predicted ranges. Instead they lived across north central and northeast United States, closer to the glaciers and where they are widely found today.
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A very basic fact, as far as I can tell, apart from the assumtion about the glaciers at that time.
I find it hilarious, as that not been the first or the last facts and data related to climate imposing a view of climate change and Long term Atmospheric functioning to be cyclic, and the Climatology still failing (extremely stubborn) to consider this as a possibility.
The simplest explanation of that above fact without the need of weird acrobatic performances will be that the climate 20K years ago was similar (for not saying very similar) to the Present day climate.
And if that so than 20K years ago the climate would have been at the end of the previous Interglacial and very close to the begining of the last Ice Age, which may mean also that at present we are at a similar point.
No Ice Age then yet.
The failure of the ecological niche models most probably is due to the assumption ( intellectual and scientific one though) that the last Ice Age was some 100K years long. In a cyclic climate (approach and consideration) that not possible according to the data.
The actual Holocene data suggest and point out that if climate been cyclic then the basic fundamental length of that cycle could not be longer by much than 20K years and most probably very very close to that mark, give or take a half millennium at most.
To me this is another call pressing for a need to consider the possibility of the climate been cyclic.
cheers
Glacial extent is not an assumption. Geological investigation clearly shows the extent of glaciers and ice sheets for the last glaciation and for those larger than it. Ice and sediment cores and other paleo proxies show the previous glacial cycles. Their dates are well constrained. While interglacials vary in duration by a factor of three or more, glacials are more regular, at around 100,000 years for the past million years or so, but shorter before that time.
@sturgishooper
November 19, 2014 at 10:19 am
Before we can debate anything about The Ice Age (or the last glacial period), can you explain what you mean by “glacial cycles”(seems like you refering to ice ages periodic successions), as I fail to see the point, ……and would you not accept that any paleoclimate period referred to is an estimation of the climate at that period according to paleoclimate data we have, where the estimation itself, or investigation as you call it has a chance of been considered an assumption?
So what you also saying is that you put your faith blindly at an estimation, and not considering at all a simple explanation of a fact which you do not accept as possible because of a close to a 100% certainty that the intelectual and scientific guess of the length of the Ice Age (the last glacial period) is unquestionable.
Any thing else you do know that will debunk that simple explanation mentioned, apart from the expected certainty of the length of the Ice Age (which actually is an estimation)?
As for constrained dates in Climatology, I would say that we already should have been constrained in a Run Away GW by now……. and the “climate scientist” still to busy on correcting and adjasting climate data of the last 50 years……..which puts the climatologic investigation ability to a very poor degree indeed, as far as I can tell.
Is very difficult for me to accept same geographical life patterns of animals for two very different climate periods, ……..any other kind of explanation will require, as I said early, very weird acrobatics, or put it simply, extreme spinning.
thanks for the comment…..looking forward for your next reply.
cheers
The merest glance at a chart of Pleistocene glaciations should make what I mean clear. I used standard geologic terminology. I can’t help it if you have never studied the Pleistocene glaciations.
A glaciation refers to the formation of extensive ice sheets in North America and Eurasia, plus more extensive montane glaciation in the SH, with a thicker and more extensive Antarctic ice sheet. During interglacials such as now, the Greenland Ice Sheet is a remnant of the huge sheets which form during glaciations.
“Ice Age” can mean different things. It’s usually obvious from context. At longer time frames, it shades into the term “Ice House”. At shorter, it can mean the entire Quaternary Period (Pleistocene and Holocene) or, although this is not preferred, one of the dozens of NH glaciations during that period. The cooling cycle of c. AD 1400 to 1850 is called the Little Ice Age because ice sheets didn’t develop, but montane glaciers grew.
The extent of the Wisconsin ice sheet in NA, for instance, is not an estimation. Its extent can be detected by observation. Climate around it can also be determined through analyses of such indicators as pollen and insects. In come cases paleo soils are preserved.
If you want to learn more, I suggest you read any text on the subject.
@ur momisugly sturgishooper
November 19, 2014 at 1:27 pm
I used standard geologic terminology.
———–
Is this a standart geological terminology; “glacial cycles”?
That is what I was asking about….. and forgive me for not being able to see any explanation about that term given by you yet.
I also see that we refer to the term Ice Age differently. In my way Ice Age means colloqually the last glacial period, the one that was in question.
In that meaning Ice Age is same as a glacial period not as same as “ice ages”. There is Interglacials and glacial periods during an “ice age” but not so during a glacial period or the Ice Age (the last glacial period)
Is in capital leters as it is unique in meaning, only refers to one single glacial period the last one, the one that ended at circa 15K years ago.
Its length is not an unquestionable fact, is an estimation, and is bound to be tested by facts like the one highlighted in this above article.
A way to portray (dramatically) the above point will be in the lines:
“You can’t have a New York (or Toronto) alive as in present time (or similar to) in the Ice Age, is not possible. If there a similar New York in another period that period highly doubted to be the Ice Age or in (side) the Ice Age or in a glacial period.
New York as at present and a glacial period don’t put and can’t put together,……. and that is in human terms impossible, let alone in “rabbits” or any other inferior life creature adaptation terms”
Any way that is my take.
You are not the first to suggest me that I read more, and I appreciate your advice, but if you see, my point was on the how could one explain the same life geographical pattern found in two very different climate periods.
What do you suggest I read in that matter or subject?
Thanks for your reply again…..no hard feeling what so ever.
cheers
Whiten
You are wrong to call into question the timescale of glaciations over the Pleistocene which as has been pointed out are well established.
However you are right in the sense that glacial periods were not uniform and stable but were subject to large variation and instability. They were even interrupted by “micro-interglacials” lasting only a century or so.
“Chaotic” is a better description than “cyclical”. Chaotic systems can look cyclical but this can be illusory. A chaotic system driven by a Lorenz attractor for instance can appear regularly cyclical for a while and then spontaneously switch to a stable plateau or a very different periodicity.
Overall the recent glacial period is best characterised as being chaotic but (weakly) periodically forced by the Milankovitch orbital cycles of precession, obliquity and eccentricity.
phlogiston
November 19, 2014 at 11:55 am
You are wrong to call into question the timescale of glaciations over the Pleistocene which as has been pointed out are well established.
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You could be right yes, but considering the facts I think I can, and actually anybody can call to question the timescale of the last glaciation in the probability of it been wrong.
And this is not the only one….the other day we had an exchange in another fact tha brings to question the validity of the estimation of the last glacial’s length,,, and somehow I will expect many more adding as time flows.
You free to not doubt it, yes, but consider that Holocene climate estimation is a much better one and still showing problems with the accuracy of it been a proper one……..and there is many well established “things” in climatology that have turned to be no so well established after all, for not saying very poorly established.
Also very unquestionable “things” in climatology have turned to be rightly called to question and scrutiny.
Besides, what you say as below:
“micro-interglacials” lasting only a century or so.”
makes no any sense really, even in an extreme spinning of the reality.
Sorry for saying that but, but that how it looks to me. I assume that is a new term you have come up with and I have the right to invoke the famous “Propter nomen” in that case…:-)
My approach in principle to the meaning of “chaotic” is as it been not in the realm of knowledge, just a saying, don’t jump the gun in this one…:-)
When it comes to the Milankovich cycles, my take is that the force of such cycles is as you say weak, or even very weak on climate, while considering the Long term Atmospheric functioning as cyclic also.
The most effect is in the pattern of polar regions extreme behaviour during climate cycles.
I personally blame the wrong estimation of the length of a glacial period in the coupling of this two particular natural events ( Mil. cycles and polar extreme behaviour) as a means do interpret climate beyond the point of ~18K years ago. Even the last long warming trend between ~17K years to ~7K years ago seems to be overestimated by the weight of the extreme range (behaviour) of the polar regions climatic data.
Any way thanks for your reply. I hope you understand that I call to question the timescale of the last glaciation as matter of probability, based in facts that support in a way such a call.
cheers
Reblogged this on Daily Browse and commented:
“It’s almost as though it is living in all of the places that the model says it shouldn’t be living in and not in any of the places that the model says it should be living in,” said Davis, who also is manager of the paleontological collection at the UO Museum of Natural and Cultural History. “This suggests to me that whatever the model is keying on is not actually important to the shrew.”
Sounds just like CO2, don’t it?
The models can’t possibly be wrong. It must be the fault of small vol(e)canoes.
I’ll get my coat…
Vol(e)canoes – making mountains out of MoleHills.
Is that how the vols get down river?
Environments were different from now, but still worked for many species. Burrowing rodents might emerge from their nests later and go into hibernation sooner, but would have access to abundant insects during the shorter but more intense summer season. Compare with Arctic insect hatches now. So the mammals could fatten up as much in less time.
Same goes for tree-dwellers.
“This suggests to me that whatever the model is keying on is actually not important to
the shrewglobal warming.”Thought that phrase sounded familiar. Man-made CO2 anyone?
Hot house Earth, widespread extinctions??
The premise that these researchers are relying on; that mammals couldn’t possibly have not adapted to climate change in the manner assumed by the modelers; who are of course among the smartest of all mammals, and therefore understand how to adapt to climate. Really ?? they (we) know how to adapt to climate.
Well that premise is just one in a genre of similar creations of the mind of man.
Other examples. The Egyptians couldn’t possibly have built the pyramids; Mayans neither.
Ancient astronomers, couldn’t have figured out how the solar system works; much too complex.
Of course none of those ancient civilizations had T&V, or Monday/Thursday/Saturday/Sunday night football. Nor did they have a host of pocket finger toys to while away the day and take selfies of the pyramids which ancient aliens built while drawing all over the plains of Nazca.
So when the sun went down, they had nothing to do and nothing to see, so they all went to sleep.
So why is it that humans think their primitive model concepts are superior to what the whole damn system self organizes itself for its optimum performance.
I have watched videos of wild Asian crows figuring out a multistep sequence of how to get a food morsel, that required first getting some tools, and figuring out the right order to get those tools to operate different portions of the puzzle. I have watched sergeant major reef fishes learn how to wait for me to pop the lid off a rock oyster with a screw driver, so they could then dart in and grab the oyster.
Dang I had to pop the lids off three oysters, before they figured out the system, and started nudging my hand to “pop another one dude !”
Yeah, we moderns know how mammals should have done things.
Well tomorrow or Friday, we are going to get an earth shaking demonstration of just how stupid we really are.. That would be 11/20-21 /2014. That’s just over two weeks following an election. And the voters did NOT vote to commit National Hara Kiri.