Polar bear inbreeding and penguin 'divorces': Weird ways climate change is affecting animal species
ABC News
The world's biodiversity is constantly being threatened by warming temperatures and extreme changes in climate and weather patterns.
The world's biodiversity is constantly being threatened by warming temperatures and extreme changes in climate and weather patterns.
And while that "doom and gloom" is the typical discourse surrounding how climate change is affecting biodiversity, another interesting aspect of the warming temperatures is how different species have been adapting over the decades, as the warming progresses, experts say.
Species typically adapt in one of three ways, Morgan Tingley, an associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California Los Angeles, told ABC News. They shift their distribution, change spaces or move from one place to another when the region gets too hot (either to a cooler region to higher altitudes). There are also shifts in phenology, or the seasonal timing of biological events, such as when deer are born or when birds return from migration. And finally, the species themselves change, either through evolution or natural selection, Tingley said.
How the species are changing is the least well-studied, but more and more research is emerging to pinpoint climate change's role in adaption, Tingley said.
