From CELL PRESS, a claim that anyone who has ever dealt with fast growing bamboo would have a very hard time believing – see details why at the end of this story.
Climate change may slowly starve bamboo lemurs
Madagascar’s Cat-sized greater bamboo lemurs are considered one of the most endangered primate species on Earth. They almost exclusively eat a single species of bamboo, including the woody trunk, known as culm. But they prefer the more nutritious and tender bamboo shoots and use their specialized teeth to gnaw on culm only when necessary, during the dry season.
Now, reporting in Current Biology on October 26, researchers provide evidence to suggest that as Earth’s climate changes, bamboo lemurs will gradually be forced to eat culm for longer periods. Ultimately, they suggest that, based on an analysis of anatomical, behavioral, paleontological, and climate data, the lemurs could slowly starve.
“For extreme feeding specialists like the greater bamboo lemur, climate change can be a stealthy killer,” says Patricia Wright at Stony Brook University, one of the authors. “Making the lemurs rely on a suboptimal part of their food for just a bit longer may be enough to tip the balance from existence to extinction.”
Wright and her colleagues from Finland and Australia first showed that the greater bamboo lemurs are equipped with highly complex and specialized teeth, just like giant pandas — the only other mammal capable of feeding on culm. These teeth make it possible for them to consume and survive on woody culm for parts of the year.
To find out more about the greater bamboo lemurs’ feeding habits, the researchers spent hours watching them in their natural habitat in Madagascar’s Ranomafana National Park over a period of 18 months. They collected more than 2,000 feeding observations in total. Those data showed that the lemurs spend 95 percent of their feeding time eating a single species of woody bamboo. But they only eat the culm from August to November, when dry conditions make tender shoots unavailable.
An analysis of the greater bamboo lemur’s current distribution on the island of Madagascar compared to its distribution in the past, as inferred from fossils, suggests that the lemurs used to live over a broader range. The bamboo lemurs remain only in parts of the island where the dry season is relatively short. In other words, it appears that a short dry season has been crucial to the survival of greater bamboo lemurs in the past.
But the researchers have bad news: climate models suggest that the areas where the lemurs currently are found are likely to experience longer and longer dry seasons in the future. As the lemurs are left with only culm to eat for longer periods, it could put their survival at risk.
The findings may have implications for understanding the fate of bamboo-feeding giant pandas, too, the researchers say. Giant pandas are threatened by deforestation and changes in the distribution of bamboo. But the new data suggest that a changing climate may also endanger bamboo feeders in a more subtle way, by affecting the seasonal availability of preferred and more nutritious bamboo parts. Other animals with highly specialized diets may prove similarly vulnerable.
“By studying specialists like the greater bamboo lemur, we can identify the different ways that climate change can cause extinction,” says author Jukka Jernvall at University of Helsinki. “And if we do not study these endangered species now, they may go extinct before we know all the reasons why, and we’ll be less able to protect what remains.”
The researchers say they now hope that this expanded understanding of the greater bamboo lemurs, together with climate predictions, can be applied to building bamboo corridors, with the goal of connecting isolated lemur populations and expanding their habitats.
###
This study was supported by the Academy of Finland, Stony Brook University, Marie Curie Actions of the European Union, and the Kone Foundation.
Current Biology, Eronen and Zohdy et al.: “Feeding Ecology and Morphology Make a Bamboo Specialist Vulnerable to Climate Change” http://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(17)31248-4
Here’s why I think this study is absolute junk:
1. They rely exclusively on climate model projections, and we all know how highly variable those can be with output in the future
2. They seem to have this idea dry seasons In Madagascar will get drier and longer, but we’ve seen climate models produce both outcomes; wetter in the future and drier in the future. Take California for example, we have claims of wetter and drier based on model outcomes. It seems to me they didn’t consider both, focusing only on drier because that’s the one that matches their goal to show bamboo lemurs would be affected.
3. They didn’t actually test any of the preferred bamboo growth and hardiness against the climate models, but instead relied solely on feeding observations of bamboo lemurs.
4. They assume climate change is the only factor, but it seems that other factors have been contributing to the extinction for a long time, even before climate change became a popular boogeyman for extinction. Scientists once believed that it was extinct, but a remnant population was discovered in 1986.See: http://savingspecies.org/projects/past-projects/saving-species-the-bamboo-lemur From that article/proposal:
Prior to the 1970s, greater bamboo lemurs were only known from two sites and following another decade of little research and much forest destruction, it was suspected that P. simus might be extinct.
…
Feared extinct until its rediscovery in 1986, the current status of P. simus is desperate. Surveys of south- and central eastern Madagascar over the past twenty years have found fewer than 75 individuals (with a recent total count of 60). Compared to their historic distribution, the current range is approximately 1 to 4 % of its former range most of which is not suitable habitat due to their dietary specialization on bamboo and microhabitat preferences. In addition, various localities containing critically low population numbers have no official protection and exist in severely degraded landscapes.
Hmmm, it seems “forest destruction” is the bigger threat to the lemurs in the present than climate change could be in the future, and has been for a long time. That’s why in the proposal linked above, they want to purchase the land
5. With the discussion about the bamboo-feeding giant pandas thrown into the press release, the well know heartstring tugging icon of the WWF, it seems they are appealing to human sensitivities, just like the WWF does. From the paper, there’s that deforestation issue again:
In China, compounded with human caused deforestation, changing climate has been suggested to affect bamboo distribution in the 21st century, thereby causing food shortage for the giant panda [23]. Our data suggest that rapidly changing climate may also endanger bamboo feeders in a subtle way by affecting seasonal availability of preferred bamboo parts, and the giant panda may be similarly vulnerable [24].
Deforestation leads to loss of evapotranspiration by the trees and plants of the tropical forest, and that leads to lowered rainfall in the region. Climate change has nothing to do with that effect. See https://www.livescience.com/23017-deforestation-reduces-rainfall.html
Perhaps this PR is just a prelude to a “save the bamboo lemur” organization? It looks like desperation in the form of “we’ll mention climate change and people will send money, yeah, that’s the ticket!”.
South Africa was 3C warmer, than currently, during the Medieval Warm Period. http://ruby.fgcu.edu/courses/twimberley/envirophilo/tyson.pdf
In captivity they eat Purina monkey chow…fruits and vegs
So the Giant Panda is the canary in the coal mine for the bamboozlemurs; being a bambooster itself.
So get back to me when the giant pandas go extinct, I can’t save everything !
g
No, No, No………..Walruses are the new cuddly face of AGW. Didn’t you know? Attenborough on the BBC said so tonight.
Cuddle a Walrus. Almost as dangerous as cuddling an ever expanding Polar Bear population, which should be extinct by now.
I reckon fast growing bamboo would be really keen on extra CO2 and grow even faster.
BTW, wasn’t CAGW going to make the planet wetter with all that extra evaporation of water happening at higher temperatures not to mention the accelerated transpiraion from all the plants ‘tripping’ on all that extra CO2?
I reckon what will kill Madagaskar’s bamboo lemurs will be the conga line of activist ‘scientists’ driving them bonkers with their presence counting, counting, counting. The poor bloody things might well commit mass suicide.
Every Sunday night at dinner time, I say “This bamboo is becoming drier, dear Lisa, dear Lisa”.
She just says “It’s CO2 effect dear Henry, dear Henry”..
“These culm(s) are making me thirsty!”
Tooright indeed and StCred you guys gave me a good laugh just as the smoke was beginning to billow out of my ears. And to everyone else here thank Christ for you….I love this site. Of course CO2 will increase the vegetation and drought-proof it and that in turn will create more water vapour which will make for more CO2 and rain etc.(you all know what I am talking about) and almost certainly unless there are local circumstances beyond locals deforesting the area that preclude? No? didn’t think so.
Maybe Richard Branson would like to put his money where his mouth is and prevent future deforestation and lemur deaths? No? didn’t think so.
Not to mentioin higher moisture content in the air means more clouds, more solar radiation reflected back into space, and a cooler atmosphere. But, SSHHHHH!! We can NEVER admit that!
Navnek,
The CO2 horsesh*t has to stop.
I am upset that as a taxpayer, I might be contributing to payments for these kinds of silly research. It is now coming from every corner of the world.
But it provides (taxpayer-funded) steady employment for people who otherwise couldn’t get jobs!
Now you’re upset? Just get on the webz? 🙂
If Global Warming would kill bamboo, there would be a big market for it in some gardener’s back yards.
You should see the bamboo groves in ANWR; something special to behold !
g
[They are rivaled by the bamboozle groves flourishing in Washington DC though. .mod]
There are actually two major varieties, clumping and runner. The runner type spreads really fast and is hard to get rid of. The clumping, like anything grows too, but it is easier to control. Most gardeners who have problems buy the non clumping bamboo.
bamboo grows pretty well in dry inland aus areas from what i saw as a kid, running or clumping i dont remember..but snakes like it too;-/ and boy does it burn well
Are you kidding me? Destroy the planet but save the lemur? If the CAGW alarmists have their way, the primates most in danger of experiencing a significantly lowering of quality of life will be humans. When will the insanity stop?
When will the insanity stop?
One week after the funding stops.
The word selection list of weasel words and phrases
are considered one of
researchers provide evidence to suggest (Note; here we go…..down the rabbit hole)
almost exclusively (Note; exclusive is not on a sliding scale…..single, sole exclusive jurisdiction [Webster])
they suggest that
inferred from fossils
based on model outcomes.
it appears
suggests that (note; there is always a lot of suggesting)
may have implications
The findings (note; most of these findings are mostly model extrapolations.)
they now hope
new data suggest (note; much stronger than “”suggests that”…..)
may also
Scientists once believed Note, actually admitting scientists have conflicting conclusions,)
climate models suggest (Note; ouch, double jeopardy where BS models only suggest and are not conclusive)
likely to
may prove
Every paragraph contains such language designed to obfuscate the author’s limited knowledge of the topic, and worse, to promote the dominant party line.
So sad.
+5
Reading the above made think of the similarity of bamboo and horseradish, once you plant them you can never get rid of them. They continually grow and spread,, grow and spread.
I was kind of thinking those pesky primates would learn to like eating Japanese Knot Weed if they know what’s good for them.
[Kudzu. .mod]
Anthony,
Point 5, line 2, “…well know…”, change to “well known.”
“With the discussion about the bamboo-feeding giant pandas thrown into the press release…”
They didn’t read the István Markó article yesterday I guess.
István Markó: “It occurred to me to come up with the expression “error of nature” to qualify the panda. Belonging to the family of Ursidae, the panda is normally an herbivore. It feeds almost exclusively on bamboos, a certain type of bamboo, in fact, which has a variable energy capacity according to the time of the year. Moreover, the panda is a solitary animal, which avoids seeking the company of its congeners, and which therefore rarely leaves its own territory. Those two facts concur to render the reproduction of the panda highly unlikely. On top of this, it is more unlikely as the fertility time of a female panda is only about three days per year.”
“Firstly, when she is fertile, the female must move off to meet a male disposed to mate with her, and she must do quickly. Secondly, when she ends up with a male, the latter declines the proposition in nine out of ten cases, and this is because at that time of year, their bamboo food source has very poor energy quality. The male panda therefore prefers to rest. No wonder as his testosterone level, at that time of year, is also very low. In addition, pandas care very little about their children. For all those reasons, I think that the panda is a naturally endangered species: a species condemned by nature and saved by the human being.”
I’m waiting for the study that will conclusively show that climate change threatens to melt all the world’s lefty / greenie snowflakes. Peace on earth!!
Any species that has managed to work its way into a feeding dead-end — feeding exclusively on a single food source — will be dealt with by Nature without mercy. If the food source is reduced by some change in environment, then the species goes. That is Darwinism in action — there is no escape, not should there be.
These island species are all at risk through the natural effects of being island species…..they have no where to run, no where to adapt to, they have to live off limited resources, new predators or competitors knock down population numbers, ….[this list goes on]. Any change is a threat to such species. Willis did a paper on extinctions of island species some time ago — it was brilliant.
If the dry season becomes longer, then they will be adversely affected….so what?
But…but…but…
Here’s the thing that jumps out at me.
You’re a lemur…in Madagascar… and at certain times of the year, the really nice, tender, juicy shoots that you really like are available, so you eat them. Other times of the year, they’re not available, so you don’t.
Pretty much the same food conditions most of the world live with up until we could get fresh strawberries from chile flown into Boston in January.
Just because the tender shoots aren’t available for 4 mos instead of 3mos, doesn’t mean the lemurs will die.
Logical fallacy…
We also had a scare a few years back with Panda’s and their bamboo. Apparently about every 100 years the particular bamboo they like to eat all dies out at once. People thought they would starve to death (obviously not thinking that panda’s must have dealt with this many times before).
It turns out the pandas, a bit hungry from lack of their favorite bamboo, started eating other varieties of bamboo, no kidding.
Jim ==> I’s not so much the timing, or the time of availability of shoots — it is that they eat ONLY one type of bamboo….what if there is a bamboo blight affecting that species of bamboo? (like Dutch elm disease). Darwinian dead-end species, I’m afraid.
“Just because the tender shoots aren’t available for 4 mos instead of 3mos, doesn’t mean the lemurs will die.”
No but it doesn’t mean that they will survive either. Which is why the authors looked at the areas where bamboo lemurs were found in the fossil record and compared that to the length of dry season. There was a definite correlation between length of the wet season and the abundance of lemurs. After all if you need X calories to eat and store as fat to survive the dry season then any change in the length of the wet season is going to decrease your chances of survival.
It sex they sped 95% of their feeding time eating it…what abouts the other 5%?
And up above, someone sez they eat monkey chow.
Just cuz this is what they eat…who said it is all they CAN eat?
Germinio,
They are assuming that the areas the fossils were found grew bamboo IN ADDITION TO the current growth areas.
What if the bamboo growing areas moved (for whatever reason) and the lemurs followed it?
They assumed that the decrease in range was due to the area drying out, when in fact logging is a much more logical explanation.
Kip, the article says “almost exclusively live on one species of bamboo.” That suggests that though not optimal other species can be eaten instead. The fact that lemurs may have moved from earlier areas may be because they moved to areas that had a greater abundance of their preferred bamboo. In fact, they may have “overgrazed” the areas they left, and Nature, being the quirky girl she is, chose to close off the route they used to move on, so there was no going back. I wouldn’t be surprised that the lemurs will survive on other bamboos. After all, just because I prefer beef, doesn’t mean I won’t eat chicken if that’s all that is available. Hungry animals tend to think the same way.
Climate change to shorten the horns of unicorns 🦄
Climate change to lengthen the migration routes of flying pigs 🐖
Climate change to increase the population of little green men on the moon 🌑
Good to see that science is safe in the hands of the next generation – nunc dimittis.
If the world split in two, then we would all die.
Not if Tug Speedman, aka Al Gore, was there to save us!
https://goo.gl/images/djvHAp
Self-evident nonsense.
If lemurs have been on Madagascar for millions of years they will have experienced swings of climate vastly more extreme than anything possible in the next millennium or two.
Again warmists are more willfully and embarrassingly ignorant than Duane Gish creationists.
At least creationists allow the earth to be a few thousand years old.
But the mind of warmists is a vaccuum before 1850, their earth creation date by a 97% consensus.
Name the worst thing that could happen anywhere in the world.
Now claim climate change will cause it.
Write a grant request.
You’ll get funded.
Worst thing that could ever happen: the plant that produces cacao, which goes into chocolate, yields to the depredations of a previously unknown, unclassified species of elephant. The cacao plant disappears. Chocolate is gone forever! We must save the cacao plant!!
Obviously, a desperate and expensive plan for interference with Nature is required to avoid loss of chocolate, or the world will suffer needlessly and endlessly from this blight and loss!
Now gimme some money!
Sara,
You’d only use that money – taken from the mouths of orphans – to buy chocolate [or red wine, just like me!]!
Auto
The temperature and humidity in Madagascar are regulated by gravity and the proximity of the ocean and NEITHER will be changing.
A billion morons around the world think that an increase in average global temperature means the temperature will rise everywhere… and they’re all idiots.
Bamboo is a C4 plant. It is the most tree-like C4 plant there is.
If CO2 fell to 200 ppm or so on a permanent basis, Bamboo would become the dominant forest vegetation on the planet. It might take many millions of years, but it would take over subject to some other C4 plant evolving along the same lines.
As a C4 plant, it is less susceptible to low rainfall and thus, this study cannot make the argument that less rainfall will doom Bamboo. If anything, Bamboo will thrive with less rainfall compared to the other plants. They could make the argument that increased CO2 will allow the C3 bushes and trees to out-compete them but then they would have to be actual scientists with objectivity to understand that issue.
Bill
Could the evolution of bamboo specialists such as this lemur and also pandas, be a relic of past glacial times when ~ 200ppm CO2 levels expanded the coverage of the C4 bamboos and encouraged dietary specialisation in bamboo eating?
Or maybe the lemurs and pandas are just picky eaters?
The study has the obligaltory “climate change” tag line. And since the study was “peer reviewed” – then it is not open for critizism.
At least that is what they say at skeptical science
The “Polarstern”, a million-dollar research vessel has just returned from Greenland. The result: In Greenland the ice melts and in a hundred years it will completely disappear …..
To get these senseless research results, we spend millions! It would be much better to send this money to the developing countries so that they can invest in infrastructure and education. This would bring a real improvement for people in the future.
You answered your own unspoken question- it would help people. The greenies couldn’t give a rat’s patootie about people
Pandas got in trouble in China a decade or so ago when the bamboo species they normally ate bloomed. Bamboo only bloom every 30-50 years. When a species in an area blooms it all blooms at the same time. Then the parent plants die. It takes a while for the grove to recover. A Kip Hansen said earlier, species, especially island species that over specialize are doomed, especially if their populations were never very large to begin with. Having known folks that worked in Madagasgar they fully understood that the problems with the flora and fauna there was poor land management and not climatic change. Though one suggested deforestation might cause change in local weather.
quote “researchers provide evidence to suggest…”
Did the researcher provided evidence, or did they make a suggestion?
Providing evidence is what the follow on study is for.
In every area of ecological sciences, it’s a fight for funding. A fight for that next grant to feed your family and your post-docs.
Weaving “Climate Change may to this that or the other bad thing” into your manuscripts is a hoped for Golden-ticket to grant success.
Climate Change is all about the money, and it has totally corrupted much of natural sciences.
Throughout the history of animal life on this planet, climate changes have caused extinctions for over-specialized species unable to adapt to change fast enough. Adaptability is the requirement for survival. This is an essential part of evolution, on planet Earth.
Again, the problem is the Climate Science assumption that you can ignore everything that happened before the industrial revolution.
As far as they are concerned, the woolly mammoth and sabre toothed tiger never existed. I think the number of species that have gone extinct exceeds the number that currently exist. Can anyone confirm this?
Why, yes. Yes, someone can. George Carlin told us so, based on studies by many, many paleontologists. 98% of all species that have ever existed are extinct. Let them go in peace.
I mean, does anyone really want to revive the pleisiosaur? Or the Tully monster? Or smallpox?
When it suits their nefarious purposes, CACA adherents claim that AGW will increase precipitation. When it serves their antihuman ends, then just the opposite.
But let’s look at the data. Here are January temperature and rainfall figures for Madagascar by time period:
1901-1930: 24.9 degrees C & 252 mm
1931-1960: 24.3 degrees C & 273 mm
1961-1990: 24.4 degrees C & 284.7 mm
1991-2015: 27.4 degrees C & 300.5 mm
http://sdwebx.worldbank.org/climateportal/index.cfm?page=country_historical_climate&ThisRegion=Africa&ThisCCode=MDG
How much is the effect of “global warming” and how much of deforestation, urbanization and other land use changes is debatable, as is the accuracy of recent temperature “data”. But clearly, a warmer Madagascar is a wetter island.
For most periods, January has been the wettest month, followed by Feb, Dec and March.
The driest month, September, has however seen rainfall drop from 34.7 mm in 1901-30 to 27.7 mm in 1991-2015. But it had already fallen to 30.5 mm in 1931-60 and 32.2 mm in 1961-90.
What is relevant is rainfall and available moisture in the few remaining bamboo forest tracts occupied by the greater bamboo lemurs. Dunno how well the soil of the these isolated tracts holds water, but the heavier recent rainfall in the wet season must help compensate for a drier dry season.
Ok, the Finns who were part of the study might have an excuse, but their colleagues in Australia ought to be sent up here to the Dry Tropics and be forced to dig up at least 10m2 of running bamboo each, without using any heavy equipment or explosives. After they have admitted their folly they can buy a reciprocating saw ($A159) and a minimum of 30 5 tpa HC blades ($A210).
The greater bamboo lemurs eats, shoots, roots, and leaves !
crap…… even the lemurs have guns !!
Streetcred,
Koalas do the same.
Bamboo eating lemurs on Madagascar 🇲🇬 have a very real problem – deforestation. It is irrelevant to invoke imaginary pseudo-problems such as the outcomes of rigged climate computer games.
Forest 🌳 destruction on Madagascar is due to poverty and subsistence living on < 2 dollars a day. Like in Haiti. This refutes the meme of anti-capitalist CO2 warmism. Economic development that would lift Madagascar’s population out of poverty requires low cost reliable electricity. This means coal and gas power stations.
Coal and gas power stations give the added advantage of enriching the atmosphere with CO2 the greening, life-giving gas.
China is the country with by far the most success in lifting its population out of poverty. This has been done by making hundreds of coal, gas and nuclear power stations.
Wealth from well managed capitalistic growth provides people with the resources to protect their environment and the economic and cultural space to allow them to care about things other than day-to-day survival, such as conservation.
Economic and cultural growth also slows and eventually stops population expansion. This also relieves pressure on forests and the natural environment.
Environment and biodiversity are preserved by well managed capitalistic economic and cultural growth, which are indivisible from low cost reliable fossil fuel powered electricity. Not by hate-filled malthusian anti-capitalistic, anti-everything CAGW activism based on fraudulent bogus pseudo-science.
The boundary of a forest reserve in Madagascar shows that correct application of economic resources can stop deforestation:
https://goo.gl/images/EWKvFQ
Grant chasing , it shows the AGW bucket is still well filled.
We will known the game is up when there is longer any point in trying to play this game.
There’s more than Lemurs and bamboo to worry about in Madagascar. The Black Death plague might also rate some news. Two-thirds of the plague cases in Madagascar are pneumonic – the much deadlier, airborne form of the disease, which is as infectious as flu.
(It is estimated that around 50 million people in Europe died of the Black Death in the Middle Ages).
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/south-africa-high-risk-black-death-plague-outbreak-spreading-madagascar-1644650
According to modelling, pigs with the ability to fly will evolve at some point in the next million years, in response to the need to travel further to find water in a drier climate. With a larger research grant, it should be possible to improve this estimate of the evolutionary time frame to within +/- 100,000 years.
With a large enough grant, the T. Rex and Allosaurus species could be revived from DNA samples retrieved from Triassic bees stuck in amber, with the addition of DNA from female African frogs that can clone themselves.
I only need $6.565 million, one handsome, muscular paleontologist assistant with a thing for hats, and sprinkler system for my back yard.
How terribly exhausting…
No control.
No years of 24/7/365 recorded observations.
Multiple assumptions based on minimal fragmentary information and personal bias.
Suggest is such a definitive science word.
“Suggest” as used, is the basis for imaginary results used as absolute prophecy for beliefs.
So, Pandas, Lemurs and by extremely vague association other animals feeding on sole source foods are suddenly in danger from “climate change”. In reality, the actual causes are deforestation and habitat losses caused by humans.
More waffle words allowing the researchers to claim any result within their advocacy.
What is unclear is how these solely bamboo dependent animals survive bamboo’s regular flowering periods?
On much longer scales, these animals survived glaciations, glacial retreats, droughts and floods. Though, those events preceded mankind mowing down forests.
With dreadful confirmation bias science such as these characters provide, nothing is learned and when animals end up extinct, nothing of their demise will actually be known.
More researchers taking trips to exotic locales; i.e. Madagascar’s Ranomafana National Park.
I could use some money to fund a study on how many chia pets could be successfully started with just one box of quinoa salad seeds.
They neglected to dial in the important positive response by bamboo to increasing CO2. In the case of this particular type of plant, the response is much greater. Woody stemmed plants have a greater to much greater positive response to elevated CO2 levels compared to plants that aren’t woody stemmed.
Could only find one study but with CO2 elevated by 300 ppm. The increase in plant dry weight(biomass) was 72%.
http://www.co2science.org/data/plant_growth/dry/a/aulonemiaa.php
Also, plants are more water efficient with elevated CO2 levels, so in the event of a longer dry season, one would expect the bamboo to do better with a higher atmospheric CO2 vs a lower CO2 and that same longer dry season.
If these critters were terribly sensitive to climate change they’d already be extinct. There has never been a time when the climate hasn’t changed. That part of climate science is actually settled.