From the Queen Mary, University of London , there was shrinkage, of plankton no less. I’m sure it’s easy to extrapolate that right up to the top of the food chain.
How global warming could cause animals to shrink
The way in which global warming causes many of the world’s organisms to shrink has been revealed by new research from Queen Mary, University of London.
Almost all cold-blooded organisms are affected by a phenomenon known as the ‘temperature-size rule’, which describes how individuals of the same species reach a smaller adult size when reared at warmer temperatures. But until now, scientists have not fully understood how these size changes take place.
Writing in the journal The American Naturalist, Dr Andrew Hirst and colleagues from Queen Mary’s School of Biological and Chemical Sciences explore this unusual shrinking effect in more detail, and show conclusively how it occurs.
Funded by the Natural Environment Research Council, the study was carried out using data on marine planktonic copepods. These tiny crustaceans are the main animal plankton in the world’s oceans and are important grazers of smaller plankton and a food source for larger fish, birds and marine mammals.
By gathering together more than 40 years of research studying the effect of temperature on these organisms, their results show that growth rate (how fast mass is accumulated) and development rate (how fast an individual passes through its life stages) are consistently decoupled in a range of species, with development being more sensitive to temperature than growth.
Dr Hirst explains: “We’ve shown that growth and development increase at different rates as temperatures warm. The consequences are that at warmer temperatures a species grows faster but matures even faster still, resulting in them achieving a smaller adult size.
“Decoupling of these rates could have important consequences for individual species and ecosystems,” he added.
The team’s findings suggest that rates fundamental to all organisms (such as mortality, reproduction and feeding), may not change in synch with one another in a warming world. This could have profound implications for understanding how organisms work, and impact on entire food webs and the world’s ecosystems.
Although the team’s findings disagree with earlier assertions of many macro-ecologists, they clearly explain the smaller sizes associated with the ‘temperature-size rule’. They hope their work will help those investigating the potential impacts of climate change on the natural world.
This is good news soon the boa constrictors here in Florida will be 2 inches long.
Annie: They aren’t cold blooded Duh.
In my experience roaming North America, mammals do tend to be bigger in northern (cold) climates, like polar bears and moose. Herps and bugs (with the noteable exception of mosquitos) are smaller in the north.
Bugs and herps are quite large in southern (warm) climates, like tarantulas and alligators. Mammals tend to be small, like the kit fox and the pronghorn.
BUT– there’s a whole lot of overlap (coyotes, elk, black bears) and many large animals in the southern areas are simply hunted to extinction or rarity (mountain lions, grizzly bears, wolves, bison). It also seems to apply only to North America, as pointed out numerous times above, and doesn’t hold up very well historically.
So I can see how people get the impression that warm = small mammals, big bugs and herps. But, as with all things, it’s not nearly that simple once you look past the surface.
And here I was thinking a copepod was something you hid in when the sky was falling
So on the one hand, Global Warming causes over-population, but on the other hand, it makes everything smaller, so there’ll be more room.
See, nature is self-regulating.
I used to raise snakes as a hobby and bred them for various genetic traits as well. Fun animals, snakes. I didn’t do any real measurements on my animals, but they were in a room at 90 degrees Fahrenheit, warmer than the temperature they lived at in the wild in the 80-85 range. My animals tended to be larger than their wild counterparts, but that might be occasioned by the fact they could live much longer. But they wouldn’t be considered smaller by any means.
There should be independent studies that try to replicate these results and see what they report. My snakes don’t translate to the organisms they studied, but I’d caution them against generalizing across all species.
I didn’t read about the magnitude of the warming.
Was it a 0.5 or 5.0 degree change in temp to detect their change in growth?
The ‘shrinking with heat’ concept works so well, perhaps we should apply it to dinosaurs, who lived during a global warming event that kept average temperatures 8 to 12C greater than today.
I noticed that when I boil shrimp, they’re smaller coming out of the pot then when they went in. That explains it.
I hope this is true. If it is I think I’ll convert from skeptic/denier to warmist. I’m having a helluva time losing the last ten pounds on my diet. Better get in my SUV and watch the pounds melt away.
Chuck Nolan says:
September 27, 2011 at 4:12 pm
I didn’t read about the magnitude of the warming.
Was it a 0.5 or 5.0 degree change in temp to detect their change in growth?
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Good point Chuck……..I’ll bet they raised the temp at least 10 degrees
Rotifers are sized S, SS, and SSS (super small) the temp range to culture from S to SSS is over 20 degrees F.
Now hang on… When we pointed out that the GW would only be 1C in 70 years, they said “Yeah, but animals can’t adapt that fast.” Now they claim they rapidly adapt to temperature changes, and that’s supposed to be bad for what reason exactly? More precisely, what kind of change / non-change would they accept as falsification of the theory that warming is bad for species?
insects are mostly dependent on weather parameters as to when they emerge which then determines adult size later on. Grasshoppers this year are so small as to appear to all be juveniles. Their size can be traced back to a cold spring resulting in late emergence. Their growing season, though warm enough, was not long enough. A cold spring followed by an unseasonally warm summer may result in small insect size, not due to warming, but due to cooling.
Sean Peake asked: “So just how cold were the Jurassic/Permian periods?”
Early Permian 10 degrees C. Late Permian 25C. Early Jurassic 25C, late Jurassic 17C.
See Moncton’s chart in the previous post.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/09/27/monckton-on-pulling-planck-out-of-a-hat/#more-48277
Jon says:
September 27, 2011 at 1:26 pm
Read this: http://www.fmap.ca/ramweb/papers-total/temp_depend_copepod.pdf
Written before the recent AGW debate.
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Thank you for this link 🙂
Quick point.
I didn’t read the report, but did the research take place in nature or in a tank?
For the sake of it, assume that research was done in nature in the northern hemisphere. Samples were taken in the equatorial region and others in the northern region in the summer months. Now, did they consider that daylight hours are longer in the northern regions. Let your own mind decide what effect that a longer daily daylight period would have.
Is the Queen Mary going to sink?
Artic short compact people and in Africa tall gangly people. is this maybe just cherry picking with only some of the data given. It sounds meaningless with out having numbers for biomass.
I happened to watch a show this evening on Animal Planet about jellyfish. It was a very good show until the last 10 minutes when they had to add what the impacts of global warming ” will be “.
Seems that the only trick to get hibernating jelly’s to release from the bottom and start making a mess that will end the world is to warm them up.
Last information I remember seeing is that the oceans have been even more stable then the atmosphere in relation to temperature.
Is there any freaking way in which to enjoy science without CAGW being the end result? Based on that show in 40 or so years 50% of our diet will be jellyfish protein.
It’s that time of the year again. The open water temperature of the small lakes in my area has dropped below 65F. That’s my minimum temp for open water swimming. At 65F, I can barely regulate and steady down my breathing during the swim. I have no control over shrinkage of the copepods
Pamela Gray says:
September 27, 2011 at 5:52 pm
RE: “Small grass hoppers this year”. I had noted this also, this year.
I live between Fairwood and MapleValley, WA. I have an excellent view of the north face of Mt. Rainier. This year, the north face has never had more than 40% bare rock visible. The majority has remained snow covered, same as last year, unlike the previous 9 years since I have lived here.
Similarly, my open water swimming this year did not start until late June, when the water temp finally rose to 65F, fully 3 weeks later than ‘normal’ since I have lived here. This has been the only year in my experience in WA that I have had to add heat to the house in 11 months of the year. August 2011 was the only month that I did not have to use supplemental heat (house temp drops below 62F).
Yes – It is just ‘weather’, but a marked change in the weather, in my experience.
The latest research on dinosaur fossils show that some species were feathered. those feathers were of the downy variety to keep them warm so perhaps some times during the Jurassic and Cretaceous were colder than once thought.
More Grant Money will consolidate the research.
And there I thought animals’ size is mostly dependent on available energy intake vs. heat loss to the environment.
the cold blooded snakes emerging in my area of Aus this year, that I have seen so far, are damned big! brown at over 7ft, and a tiger at just on 4ft. its been quite cool and very wet so far.
the frogs havent shut up since january rains, and theyre breeding extremely well so the coldblooded snakes have plenty of tucker, oh and the mouse plague over winter didnt seem to be smaller than usual size meece either.
Smaller copepods having babies, smaller copepods consume less food per copepod, but more copepods. Result should be an increase of copepod gross mass as smaller copepods require less food per day, but since food source is constant, numbers increase to match food source availability.
Difference in total copepod mass is reduction in consumption need energy divided by average copepod consumption need energy (mass equivalent) times average mass of copepod.
Lots of really funny comments, however this study could be useful, if valid, as it could play into the mystery of Codfish populations, which refuse to obey scientists, and haven’t rebounded despite all the bullying of fishermen by bigshots.
I distrust a lot of the fisheries “science,” (as WWF and Greenpeace are involved.) The simple fact of the matter is that a single, female codfish lays something like 4 million eggs, and, given the right circumstances, codfish populations could explode almost over night. Anyone who has lived by the sea has seen how certain populations do this. The mystery is what “the right circumstances” are.
Codfish begin by floating around with the plankton, as tiny eggs and minute fish only a tenth of an inch long, and in polar regions some copepods are over a quarter inch. So cod may begin as prey for copepods, before graduating to eating them.
If scientists can use the words “if” and “might,” perhaps I can be excused for the following:
If warmer water, (such as the MWP’s,) shrank the copepods, then the cod might graduate from eaten to eaters more quickly, and one of the ocean’s mysterious population-explosions might occur. (Cod populations were so huge after the MWP that they could be fished from the ocean with large baskets, rather than nets, and were a big reason many fishermen from northern Europe crossed the Atlantic before Columbus and Cabot.)
In any case, the fishermen will get the blame for low populations, while the bigshots take the credit if populations rebound.