UCSC biologist
Barry Sinervo leads NSF-funded project to study the effects of climate change
on plants and animals around the world
March 13,
2013, By Tim Stephens
University of
California-Santa Cruz Press Release- The National Science Foundation (NSF) has
awarded $2 million in grants to fund a collaborative research project
to investigate how climate change is affecting plant communities and animal
populations around the world. Led by UC Santa Cruz biologist Barry Sinervo, an
international team of scientists will study the effects of climate change at
research sites on five continents.
In 2010,
Sinervo and others published a landmark paper documenting the
widespread extinction of lizard populations due to climate change. The new
study will evaluate how climate-driven changes to plant communities are
affecting local populations of lizards, frogs, fish, and other
"cold-blooded" vertebrate animals. As climate change alters global
patterns of temperature and rainfall, the resulting changes to plant
communities may be causing local extinctions of many vertebrate species,
Sinervo said.
"Our
hypothesis is that many vertebrate species are going extinct in part because
rising temperatures are directly stressful to them, and in part because rising
temperatures also damage plant communities, upon which animals rely for food,
water, and shelter," he said.
In the 2010
study, Sinervo's group developed a computer-based model for predicting the risk
of local extinction for different lizard populations. The new study will
further develop and expand this model, using local studies, remote sensing,
and online databases to create a worldwide data set integrating
information on temperature, rainfall, plant die-offs, and the physiological
limits for heat and water stress of targeted animals. This will enable
scientists to predict and test how extinction rates among targeted vertebrate
species relate to current and expected changes in rainfall, temperature, and
plant communities.
The project
includes scientists with expertise in climatology, physiology, biodiversity,
and remote sensing. An international team from 20 countries will work together
on this project, which will also train a new generation of postdoctoral researchers
and graduate students in the latest methods of climate change studies.
"The new
grants will fund scientists and graduate students working at research stations
around the world," Sinervo said. "These researchers have a wealth of
data on the species in their regions, which we are integrating into the
framework we have developed."
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment
You only need to enter your comment once! Comments will appear once they have been moderated. This is so as to stop the would-be comedian who has been spamming the comments here with inane and often offensive remarks. You know who you are!