The shrinking moose of Isle Royale

Date:  December 18, 2017

Source:  Michigan Technological University

Summary:

Climate change and predator-prey dynamics with wolves make for smaller moose. Ecologists compare skull measurements spanning four decades gathered at Isle Royale National Park. For the booming moose population of Isle Royale, a key species in the world's longest running predator-prey study on the island, skulls have shrunk by about 16 percent over a 40-year period.

Continued  

'Shrinking goats' another indicator that climate change affects animal size

Alpine goats appear to be shrinking in size as they react to changes in climate, according to new research from Durham University.

The researchers studied the impacts of changes in temperature on the body size of Alpine Chamois, a species of mountain goat, over the past 30 years.

To their surprise, they discovered that young Chamois now weigh about 25 per cent less than animals of the same age in the 1980s.

In recent years, decreases in body size have been identified in a variety of animal species, and have frequently been linked to the changing climate.

However, the researchers say the decline in size of Chamois observed in this study is striking in its speed and magnitude.

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Pesticides 'making bees smaller'

Bumblebees exposed to a widely-used pesticide produced workers with lower body mass, scientists find

theguardian.com, Monday 20 January 2014 10.01 GMT

Bumblebees could be shrinking because of exposure to a widely-used pesticide, a study suggests. 

Experts fear smaller bees will be less effective at foraging for nectar and carrying out their vital task of distributing pollen. 

Scientists in the UK conducted laboratory tests which showed how a pyrethroid pesticide stunted the growth of worker bumblebee larvae, causing them to hatch out reduced in size. 

Gemma Baron, one of the researchers from the School of Biological Sciences at Royal Holloway, University of London, said: "We already know that larger bumblebees are more effective at foraging. 

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Small Problem: Bison Shrink as Planet Warms

Bison roaming the U.S. prairie may grow smaller as a result of climate change, a new study suggests.

Interested in how regional climate affects bison size, biologist Joseph Craine of Kansas State University collected body mass data for more than 250,000 bison across the country. He found that herds from hot, dry regions tend to weigh less than those from cooler, wetter regions. The average South Dakota adult male bison, for example, weighed roughly 1,900 pounds (860 kilograms), whereas the average Oklahoma adult bison — subject to hotter conditions — weighed closer to 1,300 pounds (590 kg), Craine reported last week in the journal PLOS ONE.

"The difference in temperature between those two states is around 20 degrees Fahrenheit [11 degrees Celsius], which is about three times the projected increase in temperatures over the next 75 years," Craine said in a statement. "That's a pretty extreme difference and beyond the worst-case scenario. But it is a clear indicator that long-term warming will affect bison, and is something that will happen across the U.S. over the next 50-75 years."

http://www.livescience.com/37685-bison-shrink-with-climate-change.html

Ancient Warming Shrunk Horses to Housecat Size

Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience Senior Writer

An ancient global warming event shrunk the earliest horses down to the size of scrawny housecats, according to new research that could have implications for what mammals might look like in a future warming world.

During what's known as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, or PETM, about 56 million years ago, a massive release of carbon into the atmosphere and oceans boosted average global temperatures by about 10 degrees Fahrenheit (5.5 degrees Celsius) over 175,000 years. Mammals responded to this climate change by shrinking, with about one-third of species getting smaller.

Now, new research reveals that these changes occurred in lockstep with temperature fluctuations during the period. The earliest-known horse Sifrhippus started out this period as a bit of a pipsqueak: The animals weighed only about 12 pounds (5.6 kilograms) on average, about the size of a miniature schnauzer.

But by 130,000 years into the PETM, Sifrihippus had shrunk down to only about 8.5 pounds (3.9 kg), the size of a small housecat. These humble horses then experienced a size rebound, bulking up to about 15 pounds (7 kg) in the last 45,000 years of this warm period, putting them on par with the average bichon frise.

Continued:  http://www.livescience.com/18627-global-warming-shrunk-horses.html

Climate change spawns the incredible shrinking ant

Oct 17 (Reuters) - Plants and animals are shrinking because of warmer temperatures and lack of water, researchers said on Monday, warning it could have profound implications for food production in years ahead.

"The worst-case scenarios ... are that food crops and animals will shrink enough to have real implications for food security," Assistant Professor David Bickford, of the National University of Singapore's biological sciences department, said.

Bickford and colleague Jennifer Sheridan trawled through fossil records and dozens of studies which showed that many species of plants and creatures such as spiders, beetles, bees, ants and cicadas have shrunk over time in relation to climate change.

They cited an experiment showing how shoots and fruit are 3 to 17 percent smaller for every degree Celsius of warming in a variety of plants.

Each degree of warming also reduces by 0.5 to 4 percent the body size of marine invertebrates and 6 to 22 percent of fish.

"Survival of small individuals can increase with warmer temperatures, and drought conditions can lead to smaller offspring, leading to smaller average size," they wrote in their paper which was published in the journal, Nature Climate Change, on Monday.

"Impacts could range from food resources becoming more limited (less food produced on the same amount of land) to wholesale biodiversity loss and eventual catastrophic cascades of ecosystem services," Bickford wrote.

"We have not seen large-scale effects yet, but as temperatures change even more, these changes in body size might become much more pronounced - even having impacts for food security." (Reporting by Tan Ee Lyn; Editing by Nick Macfie)

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/16/climate-shrinking-idUSL3E7LC0VC20111016?feedType=RSS&feedName=nonCyclicalConsumerGoodsSector