Climate change to kill off tuataras
Extinction has a very poor sense of humour. Nature.com via Climate Kiwi reports that one of its next victims is likely to be the poor old tuatara (rather than, say for instance, species of roading lobby groups):
Rising temperatures look set to produce male-only offspring in the tuatara, condemning the ancient reptile species to extinction by 2085, computer modelling predicts. Researchers studying tuatara made their doomsday prediction using digital terrain maps detailing the consequences for the reptiles’ nesting sites of a 4°C hike in average
temperature… The entire tuatara population is now effectively trapped on about 30 small islands in New Zealand’s north, having been wiped out elsewhere by predators. They therefore have no chance of adapting by fleeing to cooler climes, the researchers say.
There is a solution:
So what hope is left for the tuatara? Its greatest chance for survival could literally come from us putting a cover over it, says Mitchell.
“We can put shade cloth over their nesting sites to effectively change their sex ratio back to a 1-to-1 ratio even if the planet warms — or start translocating them to other places that would be more suitable, ” Mitchell adds. “Translocations are already occurring to the mainland and we now have a tool to identify which locations would produce favourable sex ratios.â€?
So, anyone out there willing to start building awnings for tuatara nests? Otherwise we could have a very patriarchal, and short-lived tuatara society in a few years.
Photo Credit: andrew_mrt1976
July 4th, 2008 at 2:59 pm
Really this is a disgrace to the biologists of New Zealand.
The Tuatara is a survivor from the age of the dinosaurs and has survived much warmer climates than we have now - starting with the Medieval warm period, the Roman Warm Period and the Minoan warm period which are within recorded history.
So how come?
Like all long surviving species they are adaptable. ( In my lexicon sustainable means adaptable).
They conceive and lay their eggs in burrows and the depth of the burrows is dependent on the temperature. They dig so as to optimise the temperature for an even balance between males and females.
This knowledge was acquired by high quality New Zealand scientists doing high quality work - not the funding driven functionaries we have now.
July 4th, 2008 at 3:32 pm
Didn’t read the article then Owen?
July 4th, 2008 at 3:33 pm
The Nature one that is.
July 4th, 2008 at 3:33 pm
My point exactly but much better written than I could have come up with
why is every thing that happens in the world today a result of AGW
you greens need to be careful, soon the general population will start asking the same Question and then you will have to come up with real answers
you wont be able to rely On Al Gores “A convenient Mis truth” than
July 4th, 2008 at 3:46 pm
From the Nature article:
Although during the past 200 million years tuatara have survived ice ages and previous bouts of global warming, escape routes to colder climes were available to them before.
“Relative to the past, tuatara now have few places to hide, if anything their genetic inertia is now elevated. Moreover, they face a rate of temperature change that is unprecedented over the last 50 million years,� Huey says.
Still, it’s much easier to criticise an article when you haven’t bothered to read it. That way you can work yourself into a lather with phrases like “this is a disgrace”, “funding driven functionaries”, and whatever it was that Panda was on about.
July 4th, 2008 at 3:52 pm
What I am saying is it is becoming tiresome every time some event happens to hear it is a result of AGW when it isn’t the case
Hurricane Katrina and the Cyclone in Myanmar are 2 cases in point
July 4th, 2008 at 3:58 pm
So you’re saying that if species are made extinct by the predicted temperature rise, global warming won’t be to blame.
Well, that clears that up then.
July 4th, 2008 at 4:01 pm
read it here
http://www.boston.com/news/weather/articles/2005/08/30/katrinas_real_n ame/
And the other side
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1986049/Hurricanes-‘are-not-caused-by- global-warming’.html
July 4th, 2008 at 4:09 pm
Yes. tell me where the Nature article refers to the Tuatara’s remarkable technique of adaptation.
July 4th, 2008 at 4:23 pm
What adaption did you have in mind? Teleportation?
The entire tuatara population is now effectively trapped on about 30 small islands in New Zealand’s north, having been wiped out elsewhere by predators. They therefore have no chance of adapting by fleeing to cooler climes, the researchers say.
If you’ve got any issue with the Nature article, why not get a copy of the original paper from the the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, write a paper that refutes it, and get it published?
Or is it much easier to write angry blog posts?
July 4th, 2008 at 4:34 pm
what happened to my follow up post ?
July 4th, 2008 at 6:00 pm
panda, you’re right to wonder in your 3:52 post, certainly - we can say that certain phenomena are what we would *expect* from a warming world and that is all. A paper by a guy called Emanuel (in 2005) found a close correlation between hurricane intensity and sea surface temperature: http://www.groen.be/folders/docPage/NATURE03906.pdf
More there: http://www.skepticalscience.com/hurricanes-global-warming.htm
July 5th, 2008 at 1:09 am
I think I know what you are on about panda.
The same thing happened with the Y2K bug. A number of computer geeks realised there could be serious problems with computers that used 2 digits for the year when the year ticked over from 99, so they let people know about it, and once the media and general “uneducated” folk got wind of the problem, it changed from some computers not working properly, which might cause some serious problems, to pacemakers stopping, and washing machines exploding etc.
The same is happening with global warming or climate change or whatever you want to call it.
Some people, including the media, have decided that every bad thing that happens is to do with climate change, and they make wild predictions, that are just crazy. The biggest problem is that some people have found ways to cash in on it now too (just like the Y2K bug) so it’s best for them to exagerate things a little. The problem is that all the overeaction is being seen as a load of cr*p by quite a few people now, who are so sick of it that they think the “whole” thing must be a scam too.
Meanwhile the original issue brought up by the scientists who actually understand the situation is still there. But it is still a serious problem though.
Unfortunately the BIGGEST problem is not so much the changing climate, but how it will effect the ability to sustain over 6.5 billion people around the world.
July 5th, 2008 at 2:16 pm
XYY asks if the adaptation is teleportation.
No, it has long been recognised, as a result of work by New Zealand scientists, that the Tuatara adapt to different temperatures (within NZ or over time) by varying the depth of their burrows which maintains the even balance between make and females.
This is a remarkable adaptation technique - but life is full of such remarkable evolutionary outcomes.
Doug, the medieval warm period lead to a rapid population increase. IT was the little Ice Age which reduced the population of Europe by about 40% mostly because of the Black Death which thrived under cold conditions. Warm may be a problem but cold is worse. We should be prepared for either or both.
July 5th, 2008 at 2:22 pm
DougT
interrelated somewhat?
July 5th, 2008 at 5:09 pm
Owen
it looks like you’re confusing the precis in Nature with the actual paper. Either that or you find it easier to claim that the researchers have overlooked something when you don’t know what they actually said.
Go to http://publishing.royalsociety.org and locate the paper. Read it and you will see that Mitchell et al discuss the effects of different temperature changes, behavioural changes (including to laying months and nest depth), evolutionary adaptions given their low genetic variation, different intervention strategies, and so on. Basically it looks pretty grim without intervention.
It’s not overly surprising: the tuatara are the last survivors of the sphenodontians, they’re extinct on the mainland, and they’ve been on the endangered species list since 1895. This is not a flourishing species.
July 5th, 2008 at 11:30 pm
DougT,
I agree with you that many events are incorrectly attributed to global warming. I also agree that there is the risk of “crying wolf” too often. However, I disagree with your analogy between climate change and the Y2K issue.
Anyone who looked deeper than the media Y2K hype could see it was a problem, but not an “end of the world as we know it” problem. The same can not be said about climate change. If you read and understand what the scientists are saying, you will become very very worried about the future.
July 6th, 2008 at 6:45 am
samiuala - worried but excited too. The transition will be painful for us all but then I say - no gain without pain ! No I don’t wear a hair shirt.
July 6th, 2008 at 3:20 pm
XYY,
My apologies, you are quite correct. I had first read the Press release, and then went to the Society site and read the abstract. I could not find a link to the whole paper and someone had told me that I needed to be a member. However, with your encouragement I went back again and found the tiny pdf icon and there it was. (I had been looking for a link.) The authors do mention the depth of nest solution but suggest they will be able to dig deep enough - but without evidence as far as I can tell.
I remain skeptical of the ability of models to make such predictions when there are so many variable and we have so little real experience of how these animals behave under the predicted conditions.
However, thank you for encouraging me to “go the extra mile.”
Also, 4 degrees is at the extreme end of the IPCC scenarios for global temperature and even Salinger concedes that it is more likely to be only 2 degrees in NZ given the ocean buffering effect. (See Listener July 5 2008.) One wonders why they chose 4 degrees. That is double the 2 degree scenario NIWA has set for NZ. I cannot run the models in my head but suspect that at 2 the pesky critters might just survive and there goes the news story.
July 6th, 2008 at 3:21 pm
Sorry - that should have read “will NOT be able to dig deep enough”.
July 6th, 2008 at 4:03 pm
Bigblukiwi: Unfortunately not all pain is associated with later gain.
My personal feeling is that humanity is capable of adapting to a changing climate (though many other species won’t adapt), but I’m not sure about its capability to save itself from wars over dwindling resources.
July 6th, 2008 at 4:18 pm
samiuela,
“but I’m not sure about its capability to save itself from wars over dwindling resources.”
What else is new? Theres always been wars over resources, whether dwindling or not. I expect that the great powers will just use proxies in resource rich states to fight their battles as they have since World War II.
I think that the Afghanistan and Iraq War was merely a blip in the annuals of world history.
I don’t think they’ll directly occupy a country ever again and will just go back to cultivating clients in the target state and supply them with arms in return for preferential access to their resources.
July 6th, 2008 at 8:13 pm
Er yes I was going to say what Owen said in the end: 4 degrees is certainly a mid-high temperature rise scenario, but I think the point is that it would be a result of not making any effort to reduce emissions.
July 6th, 2008 at 11:16 pm
SleepyTreehugger:
“What else is new? Theres always been wars over resources, whether dwindling or not. I expect that the great powers will just use proxies in resource rich states to fight their battles as they have since World War II.”
I think you are correct. Whats new? Well one thing is nuclear weapons. The U.S. has already used nuclear weapons in war, how much longer before someone else (or the U.S.) uses them again? I guess you can say this is not a new issue either; its been around for 60 years now.
With all the talk about climate change and other environmental issues, many of us have forgotten the threat of nuclear war still exists. Maybe we are less likely to have WW3 than 20 years ago, but the threat of nuclear proliferation to a multitude of smaller states is probably now greater.
July 7th, 2008 at 11:23 am
Owen
The authors do consider different climate scenarios, with the minimum being under a degree of warming. The 4 degree scenario has made the headlines (often with qualifying phrases like “could cause”), but all scenarios change the M:F ratio — so even if the critters survive, there would be fewer of them (not good in an endangered species).
I guess the evidence for “temperature rise = fewer sites with sufficient soil depth” is mostly buried away in the supplemental material and the four dozen papers cited. Personally I don’t fancy reading them, but the people doing the peer review would be familiar with the subject literature.
No paper is ever the last on a subject, and as more research gets done expect to see more about this. But at present this looks to be the most detailed research on the subject.