One of the most shrill arguments from alarmists is the idea that climate change will wipe out species because they can’t adapt. The claims run from polar bears to tortoises, to plants and coral. Yes, if we listen to these arguments, Nature so poorly equipped it’s creatures that they can’t adapt to a slightly warmer future.
Except when the last ice age ended, and it got warmer, and the saber-toothed cats got bigger because the prey got bigger…instead of disappearing due to “climate change”.
From the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County
La Brea Tar Pit fossil research shows climate change drove evolution of Ice Age predators
LOS ANGELES — Concerns about climate change and its impact on the world around us are growing daily. New scientific studies at the La Brea Tar Pits are probing the link between climate warming and the evolution of Ice Age predators, attempting to predict how animals will respond to climate change today.
The La Brea Tar Pits are famous for the amazing array of Ice Age fossils found there, such as ground sloths, mammoths, and predators like saber-toothed cats and powerful dire wolves. But the climate during the end of the Ice Age (50,000-11,000 years ago) was unstable, with rapid warming and cooling. New research reported here has documented the impact of this climate change on La Brea predators for the first time.
Two new studies published by research associates at of the Page Museum document significant change over time in the skulls of both dire wolves and saber-toothed cats. “Different tar pits at La Brea accumulated at different times,” said F. Robin O’Keefe of Marshall University, lead author on the dire wolf study (Palaeontologia Electronica, April 9, 2014). “When we compare fossils deposited at different times, we see big changes. We can actually watch evolution happening.”
After the end of the last Ice Age, La Brea dire wolves became smaller and more graceful, adapting to take smaller prey as glaciers receded and climate warmed. This rapidly changing climate drove change in saber-toothed cats as well. “Saber-toothed cats show a clear correlation between climate and shape. Cats living after the end of the Ice Age are larger, and adapted to taking larger prey,” said Julie Meachen of Des Moines University, lead author on the sabertooth study (Journal of Evolutionary Biology, 2014).
The two scientists discuss their work in a video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jK_DKSNbgR4&feature=youtu.be
“We can see animals adapting to a warming climate at La Brea,” said O’Keefe. “Then humans show up and all the big ones disappear. We haven’t been able to establish causality there yet. But we are working on it.”
The emerging links between climate change and evolution needs further study. There are many unanswered questions; such as why predators change in the ways that they do, the importance of factors other than climate, and whether the arrival of humans played a role in the mass extinction at the end of the Ice Age. “There is much work to be done on the specimens from the tar pits. We are working actively to bring together the researchers and resources needed to expand on these discoveries,” says John Harris, chief curator at the Page Museum. “Climate change is a pressing issue for all of us, and we must take advantage of what Rancho La Brea can teach us about how ecosystems react to it.”
O’Keefe, F. R., W. J. Binder, S. R. Frost, R. W. Sadleir, and B. Van Valkenburgh. 2014. Cranial morphometrics of the dire wolf, Canis dirus, at Rancho La Brea: temporal variability and its links to nutrient stress and climate. Palaeontologia Electronica.
Palaeontologia Electronica was the first peer-reviewed online paleontology journal in the world and has been in publication for 17 years. On April 9, visit palaeo-electronica.org/content/2014/723-canis-dirus-craniometrics
Meachen, J. A., F. R. O’Keefe, and R. W. Sadleir. 2014. Evolution in the sabre-tooth cat, Smilodon fatalis, in response to Pleistocene climate change. Journal of Evolutionary Biology 27: 714-723. Visit http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jeb.12340/abstract
About the Natural History Family of Museums
The Natural History Family of Museums includes the NHM, the Page Museum at the La Brea Tar Pits (Hancock Park/Mid-Wilshire), and the William S. Hart Park and Museum (Newhall, California). The Family of Museums serves more than one million families and visitors annually, and is a national leader in research, exhibitions and education.
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LadyLifeGrows says:
April 10, 2014 at 9:03 am
I think fracking under Los Angeles, and most of California, is a totally different story than fracking in Colorado or Wyoming. LA is riddled with hundreds of faults, and the rest of California is not much better. There would be some risk of earthquakes fracking there.
_______________________
On the other hand, if there is anything to speculation about frac liquids and particulates acting as lubricant and releasing pent- up energy from tectonic shift, then fracking in CA might not be a bad thing. We don’t know.
An attempt at a little common ground reconciliation (I hope)…
Dear Ferdinand (9:13am) and Mr. Sharpe (10:17am),
I think this is more a failure to communicate than to understand. Ferdinand, you likely accept the basic textbook definition of “evolution,” I think: (only stated from this non-expert’s memory) Change within species via non-directed genetic mutation and natural selection over time.
Mr. Sharpe, you can, I think, accept that it is reasonable (at least) to not believe in Darwin’s “Origin of Species” theory (as refined by later science, of course).
Thus, HAPPY CONCLUSION (perhaps):
Both of you AGREE! “Evolution” as properly defined happens and temperature changes could drive adaptation within species. And this is to be clearly distinguished from a theory about the origin of species.
Pax?
Your Friendly Neighborhood Mediator,
Janice
#(:))
LadyLifeGrows says:
April 10, 2014 at 9:03 am
All the more reason to frack there.
Ferdinand (@StFerdinandIII) says:
April 10, 2014 at 9:13 am
Adaptation is an evolutionary process. It might or might not eventually produce a new species. If the selective forces producing the adaptation continue and are associated with reproductive isolation, then it can lead to speciation. Other evolutionary processes work more rapidly; in the case of polyploidy, in a single generation.
Evolution is about the origin of new species, not about the origin of life. How life developed from complex organic compounds is another study, called abiogenesis. Evolutionary processes appeared early in the development of living things, of course, since evolution results from reproduction, one of the key distinguishing features of life.
Adaptation did in fact lead to speciation in the machairodont felid (Miocene-Pleistocene sabre cat) lineage before the time studied in this paper. Indeed not just species but genera. And of course the machairodonts descended from earlier felids, just as all groups of organisms have evolved from their ancestral groups.
There are no barriers in the genetic code to keep new species from arising. In the case of adaptation by increasing or decreasing size, obviously the genetic or epigenetic changes occur from generation to generation, with for instance leg bones growing longer thanks to their growth not being shut off as soon, under heritable, epigenetic control.
This happened in human evolution, when our ancestors’ leg bones grew longer and arms shorter to adapt to spending more time on the spreading grasslands than in the diminishing forests during the Pliocene, among other heritable changes. Our upright stance probably owes to a single gross chromosomal mutation, the combining of two smaller standard great ape chromosomes into the single human number 2 chromosome, which is why we have 23 pairs instead of the 24 in other great ape species. This karyotypic change might not have been adaptive in the Miocene, when dense tropical forest still stretched clear across central Africa, but was highly adaptive after the Rift Valley started to form and climate in East Africa became drier.
There are no barriers in the genetic code to keep new species from arising. In the case of adaptation by increasing or decreasing size, obviously the genetic or epigenetic changes occur from generation to generation, with for instance leg bones growing longer thanks to their growth not being shut off as soon, under heritable, epigenetic control.
This happened in human evolution, when our ancestors’ leg bones grew longer and arms shorter to adapt to spending more time on the spreading grasslands than in the diminishing forests during the Pliocene, among other heritable changes. Our upright stance probably owes to a single gross chromosomal mutation, the combining of two smaller standard great ape chromosomes into the single human number 2 chromosome, which is why we have 23 pairs instead of the 24 in other great ape species. This karyotypic change might not have been adaptive in the Miocene, when dense tropical forest still stretched clear across central Africa, but was highly adaptive after the Rift Valley started to form and climate in East Africa became drier.
@ur momisugly LB (8:02am) and Timothy Sorenson (10:22am)
I think that your assertions are not mutually exclusive.
(more common ground, perhaps!)
That O’ Keefe is a genuine and competent scientist of integrity whose studies discussed above ARE good science (thus, my “Good” vote above)
IS (logically) CONSISTENT WITH the “Grant groveling” remark:
“… says John Harris [likely with a brown paper bag over his head at the time], chief curator at the Page Museum. “Climate change is a pressing issue for all of us [Barf!]… .”
{emphasis and annotations, mine}
BECAUSE (assuming John Harris speaks to a significant degree for O’Keefe et. al.) paying lip service to the funders is (however shameful in itself) NOT NECESSARILY inconsistent with doing good science.
{Note: this case is to be distinguished from that of the BLATANT propaganda JUNK SCIENCE of the “We can predict droughts by measuring the moisture in the top 5 cm of soil” article posted recently on WUWT.}
More Mediation from Your Neighborhood Mediator (I hope)
#(:))
Hey! LB!! Cool. I was right (about you, at least)!
Yea! #(:))
Janice Moore says:
April 10, 2014 at 10:35 am
Your supposed “definition” could not possibly be more wrong. Evolution means two things in biology. First, it is the observed fact that organisms have developed and diversified from earlier forms during the history of the earth. Second, it is study of the processes by which this development and diversification occur. The standard definition is “any change in the frequency of alleles within a gene pool from one generation to the next”, which change may or may not lead to the formation of new species (speciation). Some researchers now might tweak this definition from the “modern” (1930s) evolutionary synthesis, but it’s still valid as far as it goes.
Evolution can and does lead to the origin of new species, genera, families, orders, classes, phyla and kingdoms, which Linnaean terms are now applied to phylogenetic clades based upon degrees of relatedness, but its processes need not do so. Eventually however all species go extinct to replaced either with nothing or with their daughter species.
Re: “Evolution can and does lead to the origin of new species”
This has NEVER been observed.
Surely the topic here is not speciation, but rather a shift in allele frequencies such that the mean size of members of each species has changed over time (not their lifetimes, but subsequent generations.)
So, we can dispense with the pro- and anti-evolution flame war.
Janice Moore says:
April 10, 2014 at 11:01 am
It most certainly has been. Repeatedly. You really ought to study topics upon which you chose to pontificate out of such laughable ignorance.
Richard Sharpe says:
April 10, 2014 at 11:10 am
The topic raised by Ferdinand is indeed speciation, what he called “species metamorphosis”. In the early 19th century it was called “transmutation”. It is a repeatedly observed, scientific fact. Evolutionary theory seeks to explain these observations. Like any well supported body of scientific theory, such as gravitation, it constantly improves through the scientific method.
All depends on the rate of temperature change. Evolution happens over 10s of thousands of years not hundreds of years. If warming happens as predicted, we’re toast.
The cats may have become larger, because of an increase in local prey. The wolves may have had to become quicker to catch prey and so the leaner smaller body types had more success at hunting. There are many angles to view this picture from.
trafamadore says:
April 10, 2014 at 11:26 am
Evolution (both so-called “micro-“, ie adaptation, and “macro-“, ie speciation) can happen in a single generation. Its rate varies enormously.
Even in the “worst” case so unscientifically “predicted” by anti-scientific consensus “climate science” (the antithesis of real science), humans and most if not all living things will adapt, survive and thrive.
Polar bears and their main ice-loving prey species (ringed seals) lived through the Eemian Interglacial, which was at least 3 degrees C warmer than now overall & perhaps 8 degrees warmer in the Arctic.
trafamadore says:
Evolution happens over 10s of thousands of years not hundreds of years.
And you know this, how?
Evolution happens from days to millennia. Bacteria evolve quickly, elephants less so. But making an all-inclusive statement like you did is nothing short of cherry-picking whatever you like, to support your religious belief that: “If warming happens as predicted, we’re toast.”
What an idiotic statement. All available evidence shows that a warmer world is better for the biosphere. All available evidence also shows that more CO2 is better for the biosphere. It is cold that kills.
Your religious belief clouds whatever reason you might have had. You only assume, based on your feelings. That is not science at all. That is what motivated Chicken Little.
wws says:
April 10, 2014 at 8:23 am
You know, with all that oil and tar on the surface you’d think there would have to be a huge amount of oil under the surface just waiting to be produced. Oh, I know there was some drilling back in the 30′s and 40′s, but modern experience in Texas and other places shows that the best place to find new oil fields is to go deeper and deeper underneath oil oil fields – that’s why the fracking boom is happening in all the spots that have had shallow oil wells for 50 years.
A shame that’s no longer allowed in California. Imagine what it would do to the state budget to have those extra billions of dollars coming in. Oh, well.
The real problem with pumping oil out from under LA and the surrounding communities was subsidence. The removed oil left voids or poorly consolidated rock that proceeded to gradually compress as the oil was removed. This caused considerable concern among building owners who experienced fun stuff like buckling foundations, wall cracks and other nuisances.
More interesting and less exploited is the off-shore potential, since there are seeps and actual asphalt “volcanoes” in the Channel. Lots of locals and touristas blame the oil companies for having to clean their feet after a day at the beach because they don’t understand just how leaky the local geology is. The local Chumash and Gabrielinos used beach tar as an adhesive, and to water proof boats and basketry water jars.
Catherine Ronconi says:
April 10, 2014 at 11:11 am [ … ]
Instead of calling someone names, you might want to post verifiable observations that you are certain must exist.
Maybe there are observations of evolution in action. Maybe not. Do you have proof? If so, I would be interested in seeing it.
dbstealey says:
April 10, 2014 at 11:52 am
There are so many from both the lab and the field, where would I start? Janice could have found oodles on the Net with one minute’s searching instead of making a baseless assertion of religious certainty without even bothering to look. I may be blocked from posting. Will try with this comment before offering a selection of the dozens if not hundreds of instances of speciation. With bacteria, it’s hard to say what counts as a species, which accounts for the imprecise number of instances.
[Reply: why would you be blocked from posting? This isn’t a censoring alarmist blog. ~ mod.]
It is always amusing that population-phenotypic-variability is never mentioned in these anecdotally (tiny sample size) based studies. Here we have “Large vs Small morphs” without reference to the full range of population clines at any particular date/period – likely because they don’t have any data on those clines. And yet they ignore their assumption that any particular population does NOT,at any single particular time have had BOTH individuals larger than the “large morph” and smaller than the “small morph”.
Any of us knows that there are a range of sizes present in any population (“wow, that’s a monster sized bass”) except, apparently, these pinheads. Of course there could actually be differences in the mean body size / mass of any particular species over time, but these folks wouldn’t actually have any certain proof of that. Characterizing population genetics actually requires larger samples than a handful to yield reliable data.
BTW, Catherine Ronconi, well said. For some reason, the concept of evolution seems to bring out the worst in us.
Catherine Ronconi says:
There are so many from both the lab and the field, where would I start?
Start with posting some verifiable observations. I am not a biologist, and I don’t have a dog in this fight. But I would like to see some proven observations showing evolution in action. I’m interested, that’s all.
BioBob says:
…the concept of evolution seems to bring out the worst in us.
It does. I take it this is the kind of statement you were referring to:
You really ought to study topics upon which you chose to pontificate out of such laughable ignorance.
Look at a tar pit covering the ice age before the last one?
Catherine Ronconi says (April 10, 2014 at 11:57 am): “There are so many observed speciation events] from both the lab and the field, where would I start? Janice could have found oodles on the Net with one minute’s searching…”
Challenge ACCEPTED!!!
Quickly types “observed speciation” into Google, hastily corrects mistyped “speciation”–20 seconds elapsed–desperately chooses first result, OH NOES! Dense verbiage! Skims frantically–40 seconds–lots of stuff that might be interesting to GEEKS, but wasting time, dammit…Wait! Section 5 reads “Observed Instances of Speciation”…TIME’S UP!!! If they’re not in Section 5, I’ve fail–THERE THEY ARE!!!
Challenge ACCOMPLISHED!!!
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html
Er, sorry about the “geek” remark. Sections 1 – 4, read without the pressure of a challenge, are actually pretty good. The meat’s in Section 5, though.
Please note that extinction is the rule and not the exception.
Here is an Essay in Nature
But I would like to see some proven observations showing evolution in action.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacterial_conjugation
and for those in Kalifornia
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triparental_mating