Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Snow hares – fluffy, cute, less likely to eat you than a Polar Bear. The ideal candidate for the next green icon, except for their distressing lack of rarity, and their unfortunate ability to adapt to changes in their environment.
Can Evolution Save Snow Hares From Climate Change?
Species go extinct unless they can adapt to changes to their environment. And while the climate change caused by humans is often viewed as a future threat to wildlife, it’s already having a measurable impact on species today.
One potential casualty of climate change is the snowshoe hare. A close relative of rabbits, the hare’s hind feet (its ‘snowshoes’) have a large surface area to stop it sinking into snow. It also has another adaptation for life in North America: the animal’s brown summer coat turns white in winter, providing camouflage to hide it from predators.
…
“This is one of the most direct demonstrations of mortality costs for a wild species facing climate change,” [L Scott] Mills said in a press release. And while snowshoe hares aren’t currently endangered, the biologists predict that the higher death rate will lead to a significant drop in population levels by the end of the century.
…
But the chances of extinction can be minimized by a conservation strategy called ‘evolutionary rescue’: if a population is made-up of a large variety of individuals, it will have a deep gene pool, maximizing the likelihood that at least some individuals carry a genetic variant that would help them to survive and reproduce. This would enable a population to adapt through natural selection. For hares, this means individuals with genes that make them molt at times which match snow cover (it’s unknown whether they would be able to adapt in time).
Read more: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jvchamary/2016/01/29/snow-hare-climate-change/
The abstract of Scott’s study;
Anthropogenic climate change has created myriad stressors that threaten to cause local extinctions if wild populations fail to adapt to novel conditions. We studied individual and population-level fitness costs of a climate change-induced stressor: camouflage mismatch in seasonally colour molting species confronting decreasing snow cover duration. Based on field measurements of radiocollared snowshoe hares, we found strong selection on coat colour molt phenology, such that animals mismatched with the colour of their background experienced weekly survival decreases up to 7%. In the absence of adaptive response, we show that these mortality costs would result in strong population-level declines by the end of the century. However, natural selection acting on wide individual variation in molt phenology might enable evolutionary adaptation to camouflage mismatch. We conclude that evolutionary rescue will be critical for hares and other colour molting species to keep up with climate change.
Read more: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ele.12568/full
The main thrust of Scott’s point seems to be the need for a healthy, diverse population. But imagine if Scott’s findings apply to other species? Could it be possible, that species are capable of adapting to altered conditions, through natural selection, and that a couple of degrees of global warming isn’t quite the catastrophic threat we’ve been led to believe?
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Well it has, so far. They didn’t arrive as they are today from thin air, and there’s been no shortage of climate change since the first snow hare rolled in to town.
Hare today, gone tomorrow…
I’ve just washed my thing, and can’t do a hare with it!
In my case hair yesterday, gone today.
This is no time for humor. I think Elwood is singing passionately to save the Hare-lega-……… http://youtu.be/jYyBZE0kBtE
“Hares are carnivorous”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowshoe_hare
So are Richardson Ground squirrel , I watched them eat grasshoppers and they own kind, not that they killed it, what they were snacking on was road kill.
ShrNfr, just inform folk you are growing taller then your hair.
“They didn’t arrive as they are today from thin air” absolutely right. They pulled from the magician’s hat.
And just like the article there’s a need for magic!
Spectacularly desperate.
Are you trying to demonstrate your scientific illiteracy or is this just a joke?
Evolution is true.
It has lots of evidence.
Read up on the subject before spouting your anti-sceptic pseudoscience.
Evolution is a scientific fact, ie, an observation. And, as you say, for past evolution not directly observed, there is all the evidence in the world and none against it.
The fact of evolution was inferred from the evidence before being directly observed, just as was the hypothesis, now an observation, that the earth goes around the sun.
Snowshoe hares are highly fecund, so should have no trouble adapting to any changes in the timing of snow melt. They inhabit a variety of habitats from southern Appalachia to northern Alaska.
Genus Lepus has been around for about seven million years, so has experienced, survived and thrived in conditions a lot warmer than this century will ever be.
You apparently have not been listening. There is no history or creditable knowledge prior to the satellite era.
But satellite data doesn’t support agendas, so if there were rabbit satdat, it would have to be overcome.
My tree ring data shows, clearly, that there were large populations of Snowshoe hares living in South Florida during the ice age, they only moved north as the glaciers receded.
[The mods have found that most older snowshoe hairs now in FL moved back there as “barefoot baldies.” .mod]
If hares change coat colors but there is no satellite to see them, do hares exist?
What, they are using satellites to track rabbit populations?
Species go extinct unless they can adapt to changes to their environment….
What are these idiots talking about……snowshoe hares range from Tennessee to Alaska
Not to mention all of the animals that have been transplanted all over the world by man weather intentional or not. IE Boas’ in the Everglades or sheep brought to America, etc. How are these animals able to survive these sometimes different climates?
Apropos of nothing, there is this:
http://neveryetmelted.com/2016/01/28/boa-vs-coyote/
Yup. They’re highly adaptable. Their diverse populations and subspecies obviously live in environments with a wide range of snow melt dates.
Also, some populations of the closely related Arctic hare also change their coat colors seasonally, while others stay white all year.
also a very wide range of temperatures. 40 below not too uncommon in winter in Northern Labrador, pretty uncommon in southern New England. I don’t think a couple of degrees warmer by 2100 is going to bother them. Plus the hare populations cycle dramatically over a few years, rising and then crashing. It would be difficult to discern any effect of climate on this cycle.
They are talking about saving the Alarmist movement. Pay attention!
Might suggest your causes and consequences are not quite aligned
The food source (rabbits) would decrease with larger litters of coyotes
Humans Kill off coyotes = more rabbits
More rabbits mean more food for survivors
More food for survivors + bigger litters of Coyotes
More coyotes get less food, = smaller litters = more rabbits
Another cycle of ups and downs that even without human interference occurs quite commonly throughout
all species and history.
I think they’ll be OK. They are tougher than they look.
While that’s a joke pic, an owner of a pet rabbit was overheard to say, “these have got to be the meanest, most evil creature on the planet. No wonder everything out there hunts them down and kills them”.
In my estimation and having encounters with his rabbit, he might have been right. I talked to the folks at the feed store (they also sell rabbits, chicks, etc.,) about that rabbit’s behavior and they allowed as how we had rabbits figured pretty close. Your rabbit may vary.
We had a really mean pet rabbit once. Nobody could get near it. We had to “burlap sack” it to give it to Gramma to take care of. Mmmmm, stew.
While that’s a joke pic, an owner of a pet rabbit was overheard to say, “these have got to be the meanest, most evil creature on the planet. No wonder everything out there hunts them down and kills them”.
@ur momisugly Alan: This owner of several pet rabbits would caution that perhaps THAT pet owner A) was speaking of an unfixed rabbit, and B) didn’t “speak rabbit” fluently, which are the two pitifully common reasons for aggressive house rabbits. As humans we readily “talk to” cats & dogs almost without thinking about it; Rabbit-ese is a bit less second-nature, and has something of a learning curve to it.
Also, an unfixed bunny is nothing more than a carrier slave for its genetic code; any personality not associated with mating/territorial-ism tends to get, let’s say, overwhelmed by the the hormonal drives. (Think “teenagers, only worse!”)
You make some fine and true points, Smokey and my earlier remarks were more an attempt at humor and certainly didn’t paint the entire picture.
While all members of that household (and this frequent visitor,) were all left bleeding at times by that fixed female rabbit, we all grew quite fond of her and she of us. I would no sooner enter their door than here would come Miss Bunny, grunting and nipping at me until I gave her a good rubbin’ around the ears. On the other hand, she would often come sit beside someone, but would accept no touching at all, she just wanted to sit there beside you.
Her behavior was very curious. She used her teeth as a means of communication, as much as anything else. She would frequently give a low- pressure nip as a signal that she wanted something. She was quick to jump into someone’s lap, but try to pick her up uninvited and she’d draw blood- life was on her terms, or else.
That household also included cats and a dog, which made for some interesting antics. She loved to sneak up on the sleeping dog, bite her on the tail and then run for cover. The gentle old dog would yelp, but never hurt her and they were cuddling companions. Her passing saddened all of us.
I suspect that the need to breed is close to paramount in bunny behavior. She was frequently visited by male cottontails, but she made them pay for their amorous ardour and kept them at bay, mostly uninterested in them and being too busy excavating the back yard, trying for that perfect burrow.
@Alan, lovely story, Sir, sounds like a bun after me own heart: willing to snuggle but don’t strangle me! Isn’t it funny how it’s also the females as seem more prone to talking with their teeth and claws?
Meaning the bunnies, of course. ^_^
Attack of the Killer Rabbit:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Carter_rabbit_incident
http://beforeitsnews.com/beyond-science/2014/02/attack-of-the-killer-bunnies-woman-flees-bunny-stampede-on-japans-rabbit-island-video-2445496.html
All of the pet bunnies I have had have been sweet and completely domesticated. The harshest treatment I ever got from one was when she politely moved my finger out of her way when she really wanted food more than petting. I thought it was LOL funny.
Snowshoe hares are actually omnivorous. They will eat meat when they can.
My God- Polar bear control at last!
Is that the one that attacked Jimmy Carter?
” the biologists predict that the higher death rate ”
From what? Hungry humans that can’t grow food when the next cooling trend happens?
+1
The biologist have it easy. They go study a major regional heat wave. They find that in this major heat wave many species suffered and declined in population in that area. (The more species, the more potential grants.) They look at the IPCC modeled mean GMT expectation. (You know, the mean of all the models which is of course far warmer then the observations. (But why let science 101 get in the way of your grant)
They then project/exaggerate the harms based on way to warm model projections, based on linear harm in all warming, ignoring any areas of potential benefit, ignoring that decades of warming trend , even if it happened, is far easier to adjust to then two years of instant drought.
After rabbits, its oh look, there is a squirrel, lets get a squirrel grant, after squirrels its,,, thus all government scientists are now PHD “grantoligists”
I get a small shiver at what I think this guy has in mind. Evolutionary rescue? I’m worried these guys are going to tamper with the genome to make them turn brown earlier and for longer. We would end up with populations of frankenbunnies. And then when the climate changes the wrong way and they are killed off, they will recall (with suitable revisions – probably doable electronically by that time – ) that says, yeah we saw the problem back in 2016 but we just weren’t in time to save them. If only we had closed all the fossil fuel energy off to reduce carbon and all the nuclear stations… well.. just for the heck of it.
Towers being erected in the wind with long blades are decreasing some of the predators. Maybe that will aid in the survival. Also, we could cull the ones that change color at the wrong time and hurry the evolution along. All we need to do is think of something to do with the culled ones. What might that be?
Going outside now.
Tastes like chicken?
Actually, I find snowshoe hares to be very gamey. I like them best in a slow cooker, carrots, potatoes, onions, and wine, producing lots of fine gravy, . Simmered all day. Coyotes should be so lucky. GK
Proceeding from assumption that owls, kites and eagles would be major predators of snowshoe hares
Here in Ontario we’ve already worked significantly to balance these predatory species. It’s The (windmilling) Circle of Life.
Tiburon,
I’m glad I read through the comments before posting. I was going to say the same. The hares are going to be just fine as the avian predators will be kept in check by the wind turbines. The ones that don’t get chopped up may need an easy meal.
You’re onto something . . . early warming thaws before color modification would leave the hares sitting ducks for owls, eagles, and hawks . . . a harey race for survival . . . only hope for ’em are the bird blenders.
Completely in line with Birdynumnum’s comment above. Snowshoe Hare are a classic example of a boom – bust animal cycle. Completely in line with the abundance of hares – less prey… more prey …less hares. Also if prey doesn’t increase then disease kills them off. Without accounting for that cycle, any correlation of population abundance to climate change is total garbage.
By the way, simmer your snowshoe hare for about an hour before roasting or frying, otherwise it is like eating leather. Cooked properly, delicious. Try it with sourKraut (sp.) Delicious. From Nova Scotia Canada.. with a few snares out there just hoping for organic, pesticide free, free-range meal. PS. There is no such thing as a hare that dies a peaceful Walt Disney life. They all die feeding something else so it may as well be me.
Tiburon,
I have a rabbit hunt planned tomorrow. With the sauerkraut recipe, fried or baked rabbit? Sounds good, please reply.
Sorry, this was meant to be addressed to Philip Finck, not Triburon.
Recipe found via internet. Thanks for the idea.
In the fifties the Prairie Provinces introduced bounties on the Red Fox. Thousands if not millions were butchered, and shot from aircraft. In no time at all the entire region was crawling with Jack Rabbits (the coloquial name for the snowshoe hare). These large rodents multiply like rabbits without predatory pressure. Incidentally, they are really tasty, and a big male over ten pounds can feed about three people.
“Evolutionary rescue” indeed! The species is a favourite meal for the Canada Lynx and the Bobcat. Lynx population variations are always a couple of years out of phase with the jack rabbit populations.
The Jack “rabbit” is a different species of hare from the snowshoe, but related. Your point however of course is valid.
Yes those I shot as a boy are Lepus townsendii.
The article talks about Lepus Amercanus.
It would take a connoiseur to differentiate the two……….especially when stewed.
Do you know Red Fox is and evasive spices not native to North America. Introduce to America since native foxes would not play fairly with fox hounds, rather the have a long chase native foxes found a safe place to hide in far to quickly for the fox hound crowd.
and biology transitions from ‘activist industry’ to ‘fluffer industry’.
“snowshoe hare” taxinomically just how different is that from a “regular hair” except for what seems to be a very shallow gene for white fur….like ermine or fox, or bear, or…..
Its rear legs are distinctive, among other traits. Hence the name.
Thanks, Eric Worrall. That snow hare is so mimetic that it’s difficult to see it’s there. But beware of their pointy teeth, if they proliferate we might need to use the Holy Grenade of Antioch.
“Anthropogenic climate change has created myriad stressors that threaten to cause local extinctions if wild populations fail to adapt to novel conditions.”
I wish natural climate change could be studied more, so we could begin to assess it and find out if there is any “anthropogenic climate change” and how much.
There’s only one effective way to kill off coyotes, you need to offer them an open account at ACME, and then let them blow themselves up.
You are an evil man, Mark
1oldnwise and Mark,
Did this cull of Coyotes lead to a Road Runner Plague?
And did the Local Council have to hire more Coyotes even more desperate and feral than the original, to fix it.?
Did the ACME share price go gangbusters?
As a result of all the running and explosives did the temperature (rocket!) in the Canyon.
Have Mr Mann, Schmidt and Karl and the 2 Naomis done a paper explaining this phenomena?
‘Beloved Cartoon Characters endangered by (RUNAWAY!) Climate Change Induced Canyon Temperature Rise’
KABOOM!! and BEEP! BEEP!
I saw that documentary. One Saturday morning long ago.
natural selection ≠ evolution
natural selection reduces the gene pool variability, bottlenecks or eliminates the population.
Natural selection is one of a number of evolutionary processes. Consider for example the woolly mammoth. It evolved via natural selection from northern populations of the steppe mammoth in response to colder conditions. Hair got longer, fat layers thicker, ears smaller, trunks shorter, with different “fingers” at trunk end in order to gather different vegetation, teeth adapted to process steppe-tundra resources, etc. The steppe mammoth continued to exist in still favorable habitats farther south.
[Then humans evolved ways to live further north … and both promptly went extinct. 8<) .mod]
Mod,
True, that, although dwarf woollies survived until shockingly recently on Wrangel Island and finally managed to die out apparently without benefit of human hunters.
The equivalent of the steppe mammoth in North America was the Columbian, which evolved here from immigrant steppe mammoths. Some also consider the Imperial and Channel Islands Pygmy Mammoth as separate species from the Columbian. I don’t, because DNA analysis shows that Columbians could breed successfully even with woollies.
GM,
Mammoths are a very interesting subject. When we see pics (artists’ renditions) of them they’re usually shown as a single mammoth, or maybe a couple of them.
But that’s unrealistic. They probably were part of a large group, and there are studies claiming that there were many millions in Norrth America alone. Then suddenly, they all vanished.
It’s not that easy finding good sources of info. This one was up for a short time, then it disappeared. I used the Wayback Machine to find it again, but now it’s missing all the graphics:
http://web.archive.org/web/20100424001629/http://www.grahamkendall.net/Unsorted_files-2/A312-Frozen_Mammoths.txt
Oh, wait… found another page with graphics:
http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/FrozenMammoths.html
Don’t let the ‘creation science’ stuff put you off. It’s fascinating information and there’s no proselytizing. There are a lot of unanswered questions. I think anyone who reads WUWT will find it interesting.
So the question then is how is it that Elephants made it through to the modern epoch while being hunted by very capable human hunters themselves. I think maybe too much is made of the impact of humans hunting in the last 15 thousand years or so.
fossilsage
Rather, you could argue how much more effective the Northern European and Northern Siberian (who then became the North American) hunters were who killed off all of their Woolly Mammoths, Mastodons, Cave Bears, sabre tooth tigers, dire wolves, and giant camel/sloth/beaver prey as quickly as they could settle every area … While the African hunters were never able to hunt any of their prey to extinction. (This could also show that the African hunters were smart enough NOT to hunt their large prey to extinction.)
So all those species you propose are more susceptible to pressure from paleolithic tribes than bison, grey wolves, antelope, Elk….and on and on? Even with such novel innovations as “buffalo jump” I think we’ve allowed a little too much modern anthropomorphic hubris cloud our judgement on issues relating to ecological succession. Human impact on the evolution of the biosphere notwithstanding.
The Woolly Mammoth went extinct due to the norther steep turning to tundra. I assume the could not compete with the buffalo in the southern regions. Of course you not going to hear that from either the climate change people of ecologist since most of them suffer from blame human first crowd.
Eurasian and American mammoths didn’t evolve alongside human hunters, as did African and Asian elephants. They were thus naive and more easily killed.
Mammoths survived previous glacial-interglacial transitions, so Holocene climate change alone can’t explain their extinction, along with other Pleistocene megafauna. The development by modern H. sapiens of anti-mammoth tech does however offer an explanation for their disappearance. The wipe out of Northern Hemisphere megafauna looks like what happened earlier in Australia and later on New Zealand and other oceanic islands when people arrived there.
The mammoths probably lived in large matriarchal family groups like elephants. Adult males might well have been more less solitary. But IMO the steppe-tundra could not have supported vast herds of millions of woollies nor even the steppe such herds of steppe and Columbian mammoths.
G Maximus…There is no case to be made for African Elephants being “less naive” than Mammoths anyone who studies a bit on African tribal hunting of them would know that the technology and know how to kill them existed throughout Africa. Also ignored is the domestication of Elephants in Asia. I think that sometimes sociologists have had undue influence on ecologists with no background at all in a hunting culture who posit speculation as a hypothesis. It doesn’t help understanding of the evolution of ecosystems in a scientific sense.
Fossil,
You seem to have misunderstood my point. Elephants were accustomed to hunting and survived, while mammoths were naive and died out under the onslaught of new, advanced techniques and tools. Also, elephants were not at the same time subjected to rapid climate change, as Africa and South Asia altered less at the Holocene transition than did northern Eurasia and North America.
GM,
Did you read the link I posted about mammoths? They might have died out due to other causes.
The ivory towered academics in their isolated from reality, very expensive and comfortable A/C quarters in the scientific climate, social and environmental la-la-lands of the universities and the various publicly funded science establishments only need to look in a mirror for a classic case of a highly evolved evolutionary adaption to just about any climatic and environmental and OPM funding situation that can be found on this planet.
[ OPM= Other People’s Money ]
Not so sure.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgj3nZWtOfA&w=560&h=315%5D
Beat me to it! Just watch it on youtube…
Damn…”watched”…bad proofing…
Wasn’t it General Montgomery that claimed he was going to attack “like an angry rabbit” to the eternal mirth of General Patton?
Patton wrote:
“Yesterday, the Field Marshall ordered SHAEF to have the Third Army go on the defensive, stand in place, and prepare to guard his right flank. The Field Marshall then announced that he will, after regrouping, make what he describes as a lightning thrust at the heart of Germany. “They will be off their guard,” he said, “and I shall pop out at them like an angry rabbit.””
Of course it’s harder for hares to pop out, lacking as they do burrows. FM Montgomery was given to hare-brained schemes.
Global warming is throwing nature out of balance:
http://youtu.be/cd_o7_4oW0Q
As I said before, there is nothing in climate change alarmism that cannot be parodied by a Monty Python skit!
This was the first thing that came to my mind when I saw this article.
I remember reading this somewhere.
“We have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic
statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have… Each of
us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and
being honest.”
This should be a permanent ‘Header’ for so called ‘Academic Papers’ like this.
“Anthropogenic climate change has created myriad stressors that threaten to cause local extinctions if wild populations…..”
1. The claim that climate change has created ‘myriad stressors’ is simply alarmist hand waving.
2. Wild populations, by definition, always have and always will face myriad stressors, What’s new?
The Polar Bears recovered after Global Warming and have eaten all the snowshoe hares.
something of a pointless paper IMO.
Hares develop white coats in winter in Great Britain too.
http://www.craigjoneswildlifephotography.co.uk/ckfinder/userfiles/images/Mountain-Hare5299%5B1%5D.jpg
As do stoats.
http://www.nhm.ac.uk/resources/visit/wpy/2013/large/98.jpg
Not pointless. Problem needs further study. More grant money, please.
The Sierra Club and the U.S. Forest Service were presenting an alternative
to the Wyoming ranchers for controlling the coyote population. It seems
that after years of the ranchers using the tried and true method of
shooting or trapping the predators, the Sierra Club had a “more humane”
solution to this issue.
What they were proposing was for the animals to be captured alive. The
males would then be castrated and let loose again. This was ACTUALLY
proposed by the Sierra Club and by the U.S. Forest Service. All of the
ranchers thought about this amazing idea for a couple of minutes. Finally
an old fellow wearing a big cowboy hat in the back of the conference room
stood up, tipped his hat back and said;
“Son, I don’t think you understand our problem here… these coyotes ain’t
f**kin’ our sheep… they’re eatin’ ’em!”
The meeting never really got back to order.
Bravo!
I feel certain this logic escaped the PC Sierraiens.
Superb! Can I post this on Facebook? The Sheeple should hear it.
The only thing that plan would do, would be to make those coyote that weren’t castrated, very, very happy.
The Kool-aid is STRONG in this one…..
jajaja