Global warming pushing alpine species higher and higher

Date:  September 10, 2018

Source:  University of British Columbia

For every one-degree-Celsius increase in temperature, mountaintop species shift upslope 100 metres, shrinking their inhabited area and resulting in dramatic population declines, new research by University of British Columbia zoologists has found.

The study -- the first broad review of its kind -- analyzed shifts in elevation range in 975 populations of plants, insects and animals.

"Most mountaintop species we looked at are responding to warming temperatures by shifting upslope to live in cooler environments. As they move towards the mountaintop, the area they live within gets smaller and smaller. This supports predictions that global warming could eventually drive extinctions among species at the top," says Benjamin Freeman, lead author of the study and a postdoctoral researcher at the UBC Biodiversity Research Centre.

The study found that most mountaintop species have moved upward, including:

The northern pocket gopher in Nevada's Ruby Mountains lost more than 70 per cent of its inhabited area over the past 80 years as a 1.1-degree temperature increase drove populations upslope.

The mountain burnet butterfly in the French Pyrenees adjusted to a one-degree temperature increase by shifting upslope 430 metres -- losing 79 per cent of its range over the past 50 years.

An alpine meadow flower in the Himalayas moved upslope more than 600 metres as temperatures rose more than 2.2 degrees in the past 150 years. It lost 29 per cent of its habitat in the region.

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