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With fewer animals to move their seeds, plants are stuck in threatened habitats
Half of all plant species rely on animals to scatter their seeds through hitchhiking in scat, fur, or beaks. When animal populations decline, so does the ability plants have to disperse their seeds and adapt to climate change. Against the backdrop of a heating planet, species are shifting away from their historically-adapted climate conditions…
A study published this month in the journal Science found that 60 percent of all plants globally are already having trouble keeping up with climate change as seed-spreading species face major drops in population numbers…
The effects of defaunation on plants’ capacity to track climate change
Most plant species depend on animals to disperse their seeds, but this vital function is threatened by the declines in animal populations, limiting the potential for plants to adapt to climate change by shifting their ranges. Using data from more than 400 networks of seed dispersal interactions, Fricke et al. quantified the changes in seed disposal function brought about globally by defaunation.
Air pollution makes it harder for pollinators to find plants
A field trial found that levels of nitrogen oxides and ozone similar to those near roads led to a 70 per cent drop in the numbers of bees and butterflies on mustard plants…
Anthropogenic air pollutants reduce insect-mediated pollination services
Study Highlights
• Common air pollutants (e.g. nitrogen oxides and ozone) can react with floral odors.
• Both pollutants resulted in severely reduced insect pollinator foraging efficiency.
• Specific insect pollinator groups demonstrated differential responses to pollutants.
• Metrics of insect-mediated plant pollination decreased under both pollutants.
• Air pollution has the potential to disrupt other odor-mediated ecosystem services.
Air pollution reduces pollination by confusing bees
Scientists from the University of Reading, the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, and the University of Birmingham found that there were up to 70% fewer pollinators, up to 90% fewer flower visits and an overall pollination reduction of up to 31% in test plants when common ground-level air pollutants, including diesel exhaust pollutants and ozone, were present.
Air pollution makes it harder for insect pollinators to find flowers
Insects play an important role in the world’s food production. Roughly 70 percent of all crop species, including apples, strawberries, and cocoa, depend on them for pollination.
Insects rely on a flower’s odor to locate a plant, but atmospheric pollutants alter these smells, making foraging more difficult. A new study in Environmental Pollution tested how much of an impact pollution has on pollinators in the field…
“We weren’t expecting nearly as severe a reduction as we found. It’s kind of crazy,” study author James Ryalls, an agricultural ecologist at the University of Reading in the United Kingdom, tells New Scientist’s Adam Vaughan…
Hotter summer temperatures prompt fly fishing restrictions in Montana
In some areas, fishing has been temporarily prohibited on hot summer afternoons when the water is too warm.
“That’s a huge impact to fisheries and to the guiding community as a whole,” Hutcheson says. “There are operations…starting their guide trips at 5 a.m. so they can get off the water by 2, or they’re simply not taking people out during the hottest times of the year, which traditionally has been some of the best fishing”…
Why it matters that climate change is shrinking birds
Scientists have long predicted that increasing temperatures would drive reductions in body size across the tree of life, but testing this requires huge amounts of data collected consistently over decades. This type of data is only available for a tiny fraction of the world’s species, including some North American birds.
Recently, a study based on over 70,000 North American bird specimens found that warming temperatures have been shrinking birds for the past 40 years…
Shared morphological consequences of global warming in North American migratory birds
“Increasing temperatures associated with climate change are predicted to cause reductions in body size, a key determinant of animal physiology and ecology…”
Declining body size: a third universal response to warming?
“Because body size affects thermoregulation and energetics, changing body size has implications for resilience in the face of climate change.”
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