From Duke University , another Durban doozy, yes we’ll have roasted fowl in the trees because they may not be moving fast enough.
DURHAM, N.C. — Tropical birds are moving to higher elevations because of climate change, but they may not be moving fast enough, according to a new study by Duke University researchers.
The study, published Thursday in the peer-reviewed online journal PLoS ONE, finds that the birds aren’t migrating as rapidly as scientists previously anticipated, based on recorded temperature increases.
The animals instead may be tracking changes in vegetation, which can only move slowly via seed dispersal.
“This is the first study to evaluate the effects of warming on the elevation ranges of tropical birds,” said Stuart Pimm, Doris Duke Professor of conservation ecology at Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment and a co-author of the study. “It provides new evidence of their response to warming, but also shows there is a delay in their response.”
Evidence from temperate areas, such as North America and Europe, shows that many animal and plant species are adapting to climate change by migrating northward, breeding earlier or flowering earlier in response to rising temperatures.
“However, our understanding of the response of tropical birds to warming is still poor,” said German Forero-Medina, a Ph.D. student at Duke’s Nicholas School who is lead author of the new study. “Moving to the north doesn’t help them, because tropical temperatures do not change very much with latitude. So moving up to higher elevations is the only way to go, but there are few historical data that can serve as baselines for comparison over time.”
What is going on with tropical species at higher altitudes is important, Forero-Medina said, because about half of all birds species live 3,500 feet or more above sea level, and of these species, more than 80 percent may live within the tropics.
In 2010, the authors of the new study and a team of biologists participated in an expedition to the summit of the remote Cerros del Sira mountains in central Peru – a place visited by only a few ornithologists on prior occasions. The complex topography, geology and climate of the mountains have produced isolated patches of habitat with unique avian communities and distinct taxa.
Forero-Medina and his colleagues used survey data collected on bird species in the region in the 1970s by John Terborgh, research professor emeritus at Duke, to compare past and present distributions.
“Using John Terborgh’s groundbreaking data — the first ever collected from this region –gave us a unique opportunity to understand the effects of 40 years of warming on tropical birds,” Forero-Medina says.
The biologists found that although the ranges of many bird species have shifted uphill since Terborgh’s time, the shifts fell short of what scientists had projected based on temperature increases over the four decades.
“This may be bad news,” Pimm said. “Species may be damned if they move to higher elevations to keep cool and then simply run out of habitat. But, by staying put, they may have more habitat but they may overheat.”
CITATION: “Elevational Ranges of Birds on a Tropical Montane Gradient Lag Behind Warming Temperatures” German Forero-Medina, John Terborgh, S. Jacob Socolar & Stuart L. Pimm. PLoS ONE, Dec. 7, 2011.
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This is my favorite blog on the entire internet.
Unexpected Cardinals! Lol!
That is all.
Glacierman says:
December 8, 2011 at 9:35 am
“Yes, we have massive die offs every spring when the temps start going up.”
No we don’t have massive die offs every springtime, that’s when… Oh I see sarcasm again, lol
🙂
Remind me which ones are the bird-brains.
Evidence from temperate areas, such as North America and Europe, shows that many animal and plant species are adapting to climate change by migrating northward….
But, Greengos, the Polar Bears are moving south toward the Antarcteec. All will die at the interface unless you give Meester Bandito $1 treelline for another “study” by meednight! “Thees is a serious matter for thees cre3tures!”
Vaminos, Teeemnachos! Fast and Furious…..For the Freetos!
World class stupidity.
And is it my imagination, or does a certain commenter here get paid by the word?
Any human who thinks that life is worth living, and that homo sapiens are most delightful and interesting of animals, must view the extinction of species as something not wholly to be deplored. Humans only evolved because a massive loss of species provided the opportunity.
Can’t they just study the birds quietly without the climate spin? I wonder who paid for this.
So this study takes as a baseline a studies done in “the seventies.” Who the hell is disputing that it is a bit warmer now than back in the seventies?
Seed dispersal? Don’t the seeds go where the birds go? I thought seeds went through the guts of birds, some still whole, and then are deposited, packaged in fertilizer, wherever the bird is…making deposits.
Re; Alan the Brit at 09:43
And in addition don’t forget the effect on song bird population from the (successful) reintroduction of several avine predators – they aren’t called sparrow hawks for no reason! According to Wiki (but it might still be correct):
So the climate hypochondiac’s predictions about the birds are shown to be wrong and their response is to say the birds are wrong. Hubris
Just another study that sold out for the trough of AGW funding.
LOL, the ad for “Angry Birds” above is appropriate. Maybe that’s how the game was concieved. The hot birds are flung to higher elevations and eventually decend on your house destroying it.
Maybe the birds didn’t get the latest adjusted GISTEMP version.
“…It provides new evidence of their response to warming, but also shows there is a delay in their response…”
Great. Now we’ll start hearing about how some birds are just deniers. We’ll hear the ones who don’t believe in CAW (Catastrophic Avian Warming) being called loons and cucoos, and they’ll wind up going the way of the Dodo or Apteryx (a wingless bird with hairy feathers). /sarc
>>finds that the birds aren’t migrating as rapidly as scientists previously anticipated.<<
and the problem is with the birds? Sounds more like a problem with the scientists expectations.
So, the chicken crossed the road to get to a warmer climate?
Is this just another “fowl” climate study?
I’m just thankful the climate has never changed before, else we would not have as many species of birds as we have now.
Do we now know the real reason the birds are angry – the climate warmed .7 degrees over the last 100 years!?
This more than likely means that the temperatures are not as high as reported, rather than the birds have somehow become crippled. I might add as a resident of the tropics there has been no die off on the lower regions.
1. The daily variation in high temperatures from one day to the next is greater than the “signal” from global warming. One day might be 5 degrees hotter than the one before or 5 degrees cooler.
2. Local climate may not track “global” climate. Just because the “global” climate has changed doesn’t mean the local climate has moved in the same direction or magnitude. Climate change brings with it circulation changes in the atmosphere.
3. Both warming and cooling are shown to cause changes in very large circulation flows. 5000 years ago when the climate was much warmer than today the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) was nearly 500km North of where it is today. Monsoons were longer and farther North of where they are today. There is evidence of Southward migration of the ICTZ during the LIA and shortening of monsoons. The Great Basin of the US was much wetter until about 2000 years ago when something changed and the current temperature regime set in. The Levant experienced the same at about the same time. So “climate change” on a global basis can certainly change larger circulation pattern. Response to that circulation change isn’t the same. An area that was wetter might now become sunnier and have a higher annual temperature and experience a change in local species. This is well-documented in Africa, for example, where areas that were rainforest became savannah and vice versa.
4. Climate varies over time, we have empirical evidence of that from several sources. There is NO evidence that WE can do anything to change these evolving patterns or that we CAUSED them. They are fairly well-documented to have happened over the past and seem to generally track changes in solar minima and changes in solar insolation over time.
“This may be bad news,” Pimm said. “Species may be damned if they move to higher elevations to keep cool and then simply run out of habitat. But, by staying put, they may have more habitat but they may overheat.”
This statement seems incredible. Anyone who has done any mountaineering knows how dramatically temps can very within very few miles across different elevations. I find it difficult to believe that bird species living alongside a mountain range cannot live with the already wide range of temps and habitats present, i.e., the sharp variations in temperature, flora, and micro-climates are already present with or without “climate change.”
Birds have figured out what environmentalists have yet to. It’s not just about temperature.
Isn’t that region geologically active? Is it possible that the mountains have undergone a few meters uplift in the last 40 years? I tried to look it up but wasn’t hitting the right keywords, apparently
Stuart Pimm – isn’t this the guy who went ballistic over the Skeptical Environmentalist? Including an all-out attack in Nature? (I’ll have to check on this.)
Now if he were the Doris Day Professor of conservation ecology, that would impress me.
Since birding is my favourite hobby I was interested by this article.
IMO the conclusion that species may respond to a warming climate by moving to higher elevations cannot be inferred from this study.
The article presents data for the shft of 55 bird species by 49 m after 41 years at one mountain site in Peru. Although the data is interesting from a conservation point of view, there are several flaws in the study.
1) The only previous data was obtained 41 years ago.
2) In both cases the ornotologists used mist nest to capture the birds and their study was done during the dry season only.
3) Land use conversion destroyed some of the lower elevation sites from 1969.
4) It is difficult to see a range shift in Fig. 2 of their paper except at the lower elevations which would have been most affected by a change in land use
5) The authors do not discuss the influence of changes in the population of predators citing simply that the land use had not changed (at higher elevations) however this does not mean that other factors which are not necessarily affected by land use such as predation was not involved
6) Detailed local weather measurements were not available dating back 41 years ago which is crucial in montane environments which known for their variability in weather
7) Changes in food availability was not studied
8) There was no information on precipitation changes which can influence bird population shifts
9) The effect of a potential increase in temperature on the bird species which remained in place was not studied.
Here is the line that I found interesting:
The biologists found that although the ranges of many bird species have shifted uphill since Terborgh’s time, the shifts fell short of what scientists had projected based on temperature increases over the four decades.
So, if I am reading this correctly, what they are concerned about is that the expected shift didn’t meet earlier projections. And I would ask, “So? ” The first deduction I would make from that finding is “Well, our predictions were wrong, so lets look at our assumptions and see where we were in error.” Instead, these guys seem to have determined that there is something wrong with the birds and because of that, their survival may be threatened. Someone above is correct – this really belongs as an Onion story and not a University Press Release.
As I explained to a student this week, the discussion on climate change has in some ways “sucked the oxygen” out of the discussion room other explanations for changes in bird populations and range.
Loss of habitat is also responsible for population decreases of several species. However, it can be localized in scope, is observable and depending on the circumstances can benefit be habitat mitigation efforts. Depending on the species, steps such as timing when meadows, hayfields or highways right-of-ways are mowed, the presence of artificial nesting cavities, the control of non-native bird species and the like can have noticeable positive effects in as little as 2-3 years.
Unfortunately climate change has for some people become the only explanation that matters. There’s more to changes in bird populations and range than climate change. In this area, the spread of the Emerald Ash Borer is going to have an impact on bird populations in the next 3-5 years.