A video of this press release follows. Here’s a screen cap from it.
CLEMSON, S.C. — Wild salamanders living in some of North America’s best salamander habitat are getting smaller as their surroundings get warmer and drier, forcing them to burn more energy in a changing climate.
That’s the key finding of a new study co-authored by a Clemson University biologist and published Tuesday in the journal Global Change Biology that examined museum specimens caught in the Appalachian Mountains from 1957 to 2007 and wild salamanders measured at the same sites in 2011-2012.
The salamanders studied from 1980 onward were, on average, eight percent smaller than their counterparts from earlier decades. The changes were most marked in the Southern Appalachians and at low elevations, settings where detailed weather records showed the climate has warmed and dried out most.
“One of the stresses that warmer climates will impose on many organisms is warmer body temperatures,” said Michael W. Sears of the biological sciences department. “These warmer body temperatures cause animals to burn more energy while performing their normal activities. All else being equal, this means that there is less energy for growth.”
To find out how climate change affected the animals, Sears used a computer program to create an artificial salamander, which allowed him to estimate a typical salamander’s daily activity and the number of calories it burned.
Using detailed weather records for the study sites, Sears was able to simulate the minute-by-minute behavior of individual salamanders based on weather conditions at their home sites during their lifetimes. The simulation showed that modern salamanders were just as active as their ancestors had been.
“Ectothermic organisms, such as salamanders, cannot produce their own body heat,” Sears explained. “Their metabolism speeds up as temperatures rise, causing a salamander to burn seven to eight percent more energy in order to maintain the same activity as their forebears.”
The changing body size of salamanders is one of the largest and fastest rates of change ever recorded in any animal and the data recorded in this study reveals that it is clearly correlated with climate change, according to Karen R. Lips, associate professor at the University of Maryland’s (UMD) department of biology and co-author on the paper.
“We do not know if decreased body size is a genetic change or a sign that the animals are flexible enough to adjust to new conditions,” said Lips. “If these animals are adjusting, it gives us hope that some species are going to be able to keep up with climate change.”
The research team’s next step will be to compare the salamander species that are getting smaller to the ones that are disappearing from parts of their range. If they match, the team will be one step closer to understanding why salamanders are declining in a part of the world that once was a haven for them.
END
[Added, h/t to reader MarcH]
As opposed to less recent studies from 2005 that indicated the reverse is true!
http://www.nature.com/news/2005/050913/full/news050912-4.html
Fossil hunters in Yellowstone National Park have discovered an unusual way to record the effects of climate change. Specimens from the past 3,000 years suggest that salamanders have grown bigger as the climate has warmed, and may continue to change as temperatures rise and lakes dry up.
During development, tiger salamanders (Ambystoma tigrinum) can metamorphose and head for land rather than staying in the water. And warmer climes have made salamanders on land outgrow their water-based relatives, says Elizabeth Hadly of Stanford University in California. Hadley and her colleagues examined almost 3,000 salamander vertebrae from the park’s Lamar Cave in Wyoming.
Did the study account for the Seinfeld fact that colder water causes more shrinkage?
You can’t make this stuff up. They modeled a salamander model to validate another model.
Where is my climate change ray gun!
LOL! As opposed to less recent studies from 2005 that indicated the reverse is true!
http://www.nature.com/news/2005/050913/full/news050912-4.html
Fossil hunters in Yellowstone National Park have discovered an unusual way to record the effects of climate change. Specimens from the past 3,000 years suggest that salamanders have grown bigger as the climate has warmed, and may continue to change as temperatures rise and lakes dry up.
During development, tiger salamanders (Ambystoma tigrinum) can metamorphose and head for land rather than staying in the water. And warmer climes have made salamanders on land outgrow their water-based relatives, says Elizabeth Hadly of Stanford University in California. Hadley and her colleagues examined almost 3,000 salamander vertebrae from the park’s Lamar Cave in Wyoming.
Excuse me, has there been a virus introduced in North America that has done great harm to amphibians in the last 30 years. Seems to me it cause large population of frogs to die off? Am I to assume salamanders were immune to it? Answer that question first and maybe you might have something. Here is a link to some of that research http://books.google.com/books?id=20FPwWTZHjwC&pg=PT26&lpg=PT26&dq=virus+kill+frog+north+america&source=bl&ots=qBUC7OPeKo&sig=_3tsyFgmqO5ph2kBPftkXv84nhE&hl=en&sa=X&ei=-FQyU6fXK8WdyQGJo4CQAg&ved=0CEEQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=virus%20kill%20frog%20north%20america&f=false
Or it means that when the world was heading for the next ice age, up to the late 70’s, salamanders needed to increase in size to catch more of the sun’s heat to function and survive.
If this is indeed temperature related and happening on such a short time scale, rather then simulating behavior why don’t they put them up in the lab and have various habitats at various temps to see how they grow, or not, and watch the behavior rather then using weather conditions to model the movements. Turn the temp down according to this and T-Rex will jump right at you.
They studied salamanders in their computer! Man, I’ve had bugs in my computer even a mouse and from time to time a cat on the keyboard but never a salamander. I do occasionally catch them in my house and put them out into the flower garden. Computers are too hot and dry for salamander habitat.
Over the last 20 years the salamanders here on our 20 acres have been getting more numerous and larger. Go figure! Modern college professors often publish anything to make higher pay-grade.
http://pgtruspace.wordpress.com/2014/02/23/an-engineers-tale/
Sometimes just computer created BS. At least these guys were creative. 😎 pg
So, they’re saying that cold-blooded salamander is doing worse in a warming environment. Now I’m not a biology major nor do I play one on TV, but I was taught in HS biology that cold-blooded creatures thrive in warmer environments not colder ones. In fact they are far more active in warmer environments.
Oh good, perhaps the smaller salamanders will offset the giant snakes.
http://www.cnet.com/news/global-warming-to-create-horses-like-cats-snakes-like-horses/
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2488426/Global-warming-lead-snakes-long-BUSES-horses-shrinking-size-CATS-scientists-warn.html
So my biology major daughter informs me that it is more probable that the population of salamanders has exploded and they are shrinking from overpopulation. Kinda like goldfish she says. LOL
Is this a step up, from won’t someone please think of the children?
So if we move salamanders populations to Terra De Fuego, we will have Godzilla in how many generations?
Twain had it right, science is wonderful.
If only this worked for humans!
Smaller salamanders make for better fishing bait. I’m well pleased.
We should compile a “WUWT Glossary”….including terms such as
Oh Noes!
The stupid, it burns like a magnesium torch….
Nothing to see hear, move along…
etc. etc. Please feel free to build on this one! Cheers, Charles the DrPH
“Hunny, I shrunk the salamanders!”
Anything goes in the wild and wacky world of CAGW Cli sci.
Junk science is what happens when every conceivable observation becomes the consequence of a supposed “hypothesis”. If the salamanders get bigger, it supports global warming. If they get smaller, that too supports global warming, as they claim here. Junk science is easily seen when their is no null hypothesis.
This is typical of the studies promoting global warming and spamming the literature. If a study promotes AGW, then it gets published without challenge. Anyone who has studied amphibian populations will tell you that many factors can affect body size but this study never addressed all the confounding factors that create a difference in species size. Dry conditions will reduce growth, while warmer temperature can easily promote more growth in ectotherms.
It is also not clear how age was determined. It is not an easy classify an amphibian’s age which have indeterminate growth. Errors in age classification can easily produce larger or smaller populations. A statistical result of smaller salamanders can be easily created if the latest survey encountered more younger and thus smaller salamanders. In the old days of rigorous science, the editors would thrown this study out. But as journals compete for articles and for headlines that will promote their journal, any correlation gets published no matter how dubious the causation.
Computer model..check, global warming..check, government
Grant check…check.
“…as their surroundings get warmer and drier”.
There is this idea of what’s called a sweet spot, or a range of ideal conditions for optimal conditions. Warmer for example doesn’t necessarily mean worse, it could mean better. It depends on actual conditions, not “the change is always to worse conditions.
There was also no mention of the increased benefits of plant food known as Carbon Dioxide. During the period studied, the conditions for plants via this enhanced plant food levels, doesn’t seem to have been mentioned.
I know that when my body temperature is cold, I am less efficient in my movements. This study assumes that extra warmth is always non beneficial warmth, instead of from too cold to just right, its from just right to too warm. Many flaws in this study.
Wonder how they estimate the age of the salamanders (assuming that older salamanders are larger than younger salamanders).
Latter Day salamanders ain’t what they used to be…
So, is a larger salamander a better salamander than a smaller salamander?
I don’t see the problem: since CAGW causes everything, salamanders are both growing and shrinking. Even if they stayed the same size it could be blamed on CAGW; you know, because it stunted their evolutionary growth/shrinkage.
And Denis Kucinich is caused by global warming, too.
Wow! When I read about this research I realized that I am truly overjoyed to have chosen to enter the business world with a BSc.(Hon.) degree in Geophysics rather than explore the possibilities of further education and a possible Doctorate. I have had the opportunity to have a most remarkably satisfying and fulfilling career exploring for oil and gas and discovering so much of the energy that our society requires to sustain their present standard of living. True discovery , is the envy of academics who provide us with efforts so remarkably lacking fullfilment and unsatisfying as this kind of research. If only as many of them could experience the real ecstasy of actually creating something of economic value and benefit to the world at large. I am so lucky!!! They, I am not so sure….
This is a sad commentary on so many academic endeavors.
I f I am listening to this sales pitch and then was to have to make an investment decision…..
I’m out!
Always the skeptic,
Gary
Actually you could reverse the pictures and make it consistent with climate disruption.
Salamanders have always been getting smaller due to climate change. Salamanders have always been getting bigger due to climate change.