Climate change does double-whammy to animals in seasonal environments

Science Daily: Plant-eating animals in highly seasonal environments, such as the Arctic, are struggling to locate nutritious food as a result of climate change, according to research that will be published in the 21 May 2008 online edition of the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Led by Penn State Associate Professor of Biology Eric Post, the research, which focused on caribou, suggests that not only are these animals arriving at their breeding grounds too late in the season to enjoy the peak availability of food--the focus of previous research by Post--but they also are suffering from a reduced ability to locate the few high-quality plants that remain before these plants, too, become unavailable.

"This combination of time and space constraints is a double-whammy for species in highly seasonal environments," said Post. "Moving through space--across the landscape--is a strategy used by these animals to deal with shifts in the time their forage plants are available, but now climate change is really putting this strategy to the test," said Post. "Think of it like this," he added. "You've been out on the town with friends, and on the way home you want to stop off for a bite to eat, but the restaurant you've always gone to has closed early. So you try for one around the corner that's always open a little longer. But when you get to that one, it too is closed. For herbivores, the fact that there are several 'restaurants'--their food patches--dispersed across the landscape isn't useful if they all begin closing at the same time in addition to closing earlier in the season."…

A caribou, shot by Dean Biggins, US Fish and Wildlife Service, Wikimedia Commons