One study, published online Monday, Aug. 6, in the journal Global Change Biology, finds that changes in precipitation have been underappreciated as a factor in driving bird species out of their normal range. In the other study, published today (Wednesday, Aug. 15) in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, researchers found a sharp decrease in range for the Belding’s ground squirrel, but noted some surprising areas where the species found refuge.
The two studies exemplify the type of research being explored through the Berkeley Initiative in Global Change Biology, or BiGCB, an ambitious effort to better understand and predict how plants and animals will respond to changing environmental conditions by studying how they have responded to earlier periods of climate change.
The first study’s findings challenge the conventional reliance on temperature as the only climate-related force impacting where species live. The authors noted that as many as 25 percent of species have shifted in directions that were not predicted in response to temperature changes, yet few attempts have been made to investigate this.
“Our results redefine the fundamental model of how species should respond to future climate change,” said study lead author Morgan Tingley, who began the research as a graduate student in UC Berkeley’s Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management. “We find that precipitation changes can have a major, opposing influence to temperature in a species’ range shift. Climate change may actually be tearing communities of organisms apart....
A flock of birds, shot by sylvia duckworth, Wikimedia Commons via Georgraph UK, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license
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