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.
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“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.
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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?
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.
Spectacularly desperate.
Are you trying to demonstrate your scientific illiteracy or is this just a joke?
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.
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
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.
” the biologists predict that the higher death rate ”
From what? Hungry humans that can’t grow food when the next cooling trend happens?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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…..
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.
natural selection ≠ evolution
natural selection reduces the gene pool variability, bottlenecks or eliminates the population.
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
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
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.
The Kool-aid is STRONG in this one…..