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.
…
“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.
…
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?
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Here’s another dire prediction of system collapse by Aunty in Oz and one to keep our eye on in future like Tim Flannery’s rainfall and runoff prediction-
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-01-30/fire-ravages-world-heritage-area-tasmania-central-plateau/7127300
Will it evolve again or won’t it? Stay tuned folks for the seasons of rain and snow to do their job again but by that time this catastrophic prediction will be long buried and forgotten for some new devastating horror for the lone bushwalker photographer.
Yes and a very complex issue is blown out of all proportion by the politics of the mind numbingly stupid catchall of Climate Change! The flora of these ecosystems is one of the most flammable vegetation types in the world! Many have evolved to be flammable and require it to seed. ‘Hot’ fires kill trees and that is caused by a lack of regular fire!!
We have had a very dry year up to Friday this week, when Tasmania saw a record breaking downpour, causing flash flooding and drowning much of the state in drenching rain. What is not quoted in any of these stories about the fires, is that Tasmania at the same time, had its coldest winter in 50 years. So it was both dry and cold and wet and hot!
Snowshoe hares have a huge range which covers areas having vastly different snow conditions. The color change is probably caused by some environmental factor. My guess would be temperature.
I seriously doubt that the hares need genetic tampering to change the timing of their color change. The size of their range tells me that they easily adapt.
“But the chances of extinction can be minimized by a conservation strategy called ‘evolutionary rescue’……”
Best to let the hares decide that and not involve humans in what they think is best. Did they learn anything from the Yellowstone wolves/elk fiasco years ago?
I think they’re also assuming human intervention is going to have a good outcome. History says otherwise.
I remembered this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Year_of_the_Angry_Rabbit
In US military survival training, I was taught some decades ago that snowshoe hares do not have enough survival potential to be worth hunting (snaring).
Global warming must have changed that greatly, to big fat snowshoe hares. Cause maybe no Arctic snow? Need a /sarc?
What is nauseatingly unscientific is that these AGW papers begin with a litany of AGW belief for which no proof is ever required. For example:
Anthropogenic climate change has created myriad stressors that threaten to cause local extinctions if wild populations fail to adapt to novel conditions. We …
This is equivalent to starting a paper with:
“Recent confirmation of the lunar composition as being at least 99% blue cheese raises myriad challenges to planetary origins research as to how such a mass of dairy product came to be in orbit around Earth. We …”
Did any of these creeps get told about the moths that changed color because of the soot?
The Global Warming people have amazing skills. They are now able to forecast the Snow Hare population to the year 2100. Impressive. Not sure if the Polar Bears are still going to die in 10 years time. Maybe a Snow Hare diet will be a kick along for the Polar Bears.
How ever did snowshoe hares survive massive climate change before greens took up their cause?
The Global Warming guys are now able to forecast the population of the Snow Hare right out to 2100. Going to be 80% more. Maybe this will help out the starving Polar Bears. All they have to do is change their diet from seals to Snow Hare?
Looks like the Snow Hare breed like……Rabbits?
Would be interesting to see a polar bear chasing a snowshoe hare. Think the bunny might be a bit too manoeuverable in that scenario
I wonder if I can get some help from “climate change” to rid us of our current rabbit plague? The bloody things are eating every blade of grass, digging holes everywhere, they’ve even ring-barked our lemon tree.
It’s been very dry around here (El Nino) with nary a mosquito to be seen. This lack of mossies, an important calicivirus vector, seems to have allowed the rabbits on to do what they are famous for i.e. “breed like rabbits”.
We had decent rain overnight hopefully it’s the start of a decent break, look forward to a few mossies. Didn’t think I’d every be wishing for those pests but we can deal with them more easily than we can with the bunnies.
Bob in Castlemaine
I’m thinking polar bears. Mammoths. Mammoth woolly polar bears. But it would be hotter … Mammoth bare polar bears.
Import lynx. After they’ve eaten all the bunnies, you can shoot the lynx.
What effect does a snowshoe hare’s tracking collar have its sex appeal?
Wot no satellite hare monitoring?
It gets even sillier here in Australia look;
http://www.yourtv.com.au/guide/event.aspx?program_id=339905&event_id=74189715®ion_id=73
How climate made history. I am going to record this to see how ridiculous it might (will) be.
If this is the same program that I saw tonight, I thought they did a reasonable job of linking history to climate change. They had decent descriptions of the Roman and Medieval Warm Periods and the Little Ice Age. Then they blew it in the last couple of minutes by babbling about man-made climate change. Still, I guess it would never have been shown on our oh-so-politicly-correct SBS if they hadn’t made the obligatory bow to the climate gods.
Just how color adaptive were those radio collars?
Again, researchers announce their assumptions without checking the variables they’ve added to the population. “Let’s radio collar these hares with uncomfortable unwieldy collars and see if predators catch them quicker?” Sayeth the researchers… Bears, weasel family, eagles, hawks, owls, coyotes, wolves, dogs, lynx, bobcats, cats, people…
Then you have to wonder if they checked how radio collars appear to night vision predators or eagle sighted predators, or how the human battery powered radio collars smell to all of the scent gifted predators.
So many faults, so little legitimate research, such big assumptions.
Weekly survival decreased up to 7%, just what are the error bars on that?
A meta-meta-analysis found that the brown hares with the fluro-orange collars had the lowest survival rate! 😉
Its worse than you thought ATheoK…just how self selected where those hare that got caught by the researchers for not paying attention?
You are correct fossilsage! I forgot that little conundrum that if the hares allowed themselves to get caught, they were already on borrowed time!
Scott Wilmot Bennett:
I shudder to think how correct you probably are!
How do you make a white blob with dark spots for eyes stand out from piles of snow with dark spots? Why, with fluorescent collars?
I’ll bet with you on that one.
To find the bunny behind the two dark spots concealed amongst other dark spots in a snowbank, just go “Shoooo!!!!” All those pairs of spots that magically turn into one will be rabbits.
Something that doesn’t seem to have occurred to the scientits (SIC) that wrote this article is that snow bunnies don’t have built-in calendars. They turn white when it snows and turn back when the snow melts. It isn’t necessary to manipulate their genome to change the dates that this happens. Otherwise they couldn’t have survived changes in normal weather patterns, let alone the different latitudes they exist in.
Allan (Robbo)
Your absolute classic reply to Tom in Florida regarding satellites…
…But satellite data doesn’t support agendas, so if there were rabbit satdat, it would have to be overcome…
How well calibrated is your Classic Rabbit Satdat in providing RabSatData?
Is it capable of measuring The Rabbit Randiness Scale or The Rabbit Migratory Process Precisely?
Without Adjustments.
I have spoken to Experts on this subject and anything more than a Hare’s Breath just will not do!
Hey Goose Boy,
You need an asterisk and some of them ADJUSTMENTY Things in regards Hare’s Breath and Breadth and Hair’s Breath and Hairs Breadth and all of those things. You better be able to produce that Artistic License next time you go playin’ with generally ‘funny peculiar’ confusing sayings.
Philosophy
Mathematics
Physics
Chemistry
Geology
Psychology
Anthropology
Sociology
Astrology
Voodoo
Biology <– Trying like heck to degrade to the bottom of the list.
Climatology
You just don’t have the correct adjustment method at hand.
Isn’t Psychology the same as Voodo?
At least after Lew and his crowd get done with it.
Biology and real climatology outrank all the soft “sciences” and philosophy. No hard science has done more to improve human life than biology, especially if biochemistry be assigned to biology rather than chemisty. Unfortunately, climatology has been hijacked by “climate science”, ie GIGO computer gaming. Climatology is naturally far behind biology in degree of development, but once back on track, who knows what genuine scientists working in that field might discover.
Actuality was you saw was the equilibrium reestablished,less coyotes mean more rabbits, more rabbits more food, on the coyote side more successful large litters, the key would to have limited the rabbits food source, less rabbits less coyotes, ecology 101 of course that not taught today.
One last thing if you really want to get rid of coyotes introduce mountain lions or timber wolfs, I assure you you will have less coyotes. You also will have more rabbits.
Mark luhman
Acting now! on the well-thought-out and envri-approved precautionary principle, I recommend we IMMEDIATELY begin importing more mountain lions into Australia … to eat the excess coyotes we are going to need to import to control the excess rabbits we needed to import to …
In fact, let’s export ALL of the mountain loons to Australia.
I live in Wyoming and I am fairly certain that rabbit populations, while definitely related to coyote populations, vary wildly from year to year and change upwards and downwards at a much faster pace then predator populations. When conditions are right. they can have multiple successful and large litters in a year and juveniles can begin reproducing in the same season they were born. There is a reason we have the old saying: “breeding like rabbits”. And conversely, they are also susceptible to disease and other factors that can quickly knock the population down to nearly non-existent. Driving around the state in any given year you are likely to encounter an area where there has been a population explosion. We non-scientific types call these “bunny plagues”. These are easy to recognize because there will be a 10 to 50 mile stretch of highway that is a nearly continuous patchwork of grease spots with gray bunny fur sticking out of them. It seems when bunnies over-populate they feel compelled, like lemmings, to commit suicide.
Misconceptions about natural selection:
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/misconcep_03
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/misconceptions_faq.php#b2
Your misconception is that natural selection is not evolution. As I said, it’s an evolutionary process. There are other evolutionary mechanisms, of course, but selection remains an important one. From your source:
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/0_0_0/evo_14
The debate in evolutionary theory now is between those who consider so-called “directional” processes, such as natural selection, more important than “stochastic” processes, such as reproductive isolation and genetic drift. During the late 20th century, advocates of new-fangled stochastic processes seemed to be getting the better of the discussion, but nowadays, good, old-fashioned darwinian mechanisms are once again gaining the theoretical and observational upper hand. The controversy resembles that in astrophysics, occasioned by observations in 1998 that the rate of expansion of the universe appears to be accelerating, so an old, abandoned conjecture of Einstein’s is new again.
Science is rarely if ever settled. As the late, great Dr. Crichton said, “If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. Period.”
Considering the Snowshoe hair would not have been able to survive on a galcial mass the covered over half of North America 15000 years ago I would think extinct talk should be laugh right out of any scientific journal today since the hair now has all of North America to inhabit except for a small southern region, isn’t the real threat the return of the glaciers since that will impact from more geography?
1oldnwise4me@reagan.com January 30, 2016 at 1:13 pm
The litter size of the survivors increased to make up the difference, and so did the rabbit population
Cool. more targets. Now please state the average Litter size with documentations going back ten years prior to the “Intervention” .Next Documentation of this increase of both animals. Plus reports from rangers.
Please
michael
Rabbits : The lipid hypothesis implies that cholesterol, particularly LDL-cholesterol plays a key role in causing atherosclerosis and coronary heart disease. It means that when it comes to heart disease, measures that elevate blood levels of LDL-cholesterol are usually bad and measures that lower it are good. The Seven Countries’ Study Incorrectly Links Dietary Fat to Heart Disease … Heart Study, which is often cited as proof of the lipid hypothesis. …… the doctor who somewhere back in the early 1900’s, did his studies on Rabbits. Rabbits are well known examples of Herbivores which eat grass and leaves. So when you feed Rabbits Cholesterol i.e. Meat don’t be surprised that they have clogged arteries. This was one of the bases that changed our diet and made us all sick.
Further the USDA and World Health Org., i.e. UN still push this low fat high carb diet, even though it has been proven wrong with out contention. Bottom line it’s identical to this Climate Change Farce, be ready for a very long battle.
Reversing Type 2 diabetes starts with ignoring the guidelines | Sarah Hallberg | TEDxPurdueU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=da1vvigy5tQ This video goes completely against the USDA And UN guidelines. Follow the Money.