APRIL 8,
2019
Think of
reindeer on Norway's Svalbard archipelago as the arctic equivalent of sloths.
It's not a perfect analogy, except that like tropical sloths, Svalbard reindeer
move as little as possible to conserve energy.
This,
combined with the fact that they don't have any predators, allows them to stay
in the same area year-round, nibbling on the grasses, herbs and sedges they can
find. When snow comes, they simply paw it away and keep nibbling. It's a
lifestyle that has allowed Svalbard reindeer to
persist over the millennia, long enough for them to adapt physiologically and
evolve into a separate subspecies.
But over
the last few decades, the warming climate has
brought more rain and less snow in some winters. These rain-on-snow (ROS)
events can cause ice to form on the ground. The ice coats the reindeer's
preferred food and causes them to starve— a potential catastrophe.
In a
study just published in Nature Communications, researcher Brage Bremset
Hansen, from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology's Centre for
Biodiversity Dynamics (CBD) and colleagues describe how they modeled the effects
on reindeer population dynamics if icing becomes the norm, rather than an
extreme event.
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