Busy future: Earth has warmed by 0.7 degree Celsius from preindustrial times, causing 40 percent of species to shift their ranges. Parmesan thinks that with "business as usual" energy production, the number will approach 100 percent, with up to 75 percent of species affected negatively.
CAMILLE PARMESAN:
Call in the movers: Advocates "assisted migration," in which humans actively transplant species to help them escape ecological shifts caused by rapid climate change.
Busy future: Earth has warmed by 0.7 degree Celsius from preindustrial times, causing 40 percent of species to shift their ranges. Parmesan thinks that with "business as usual" energy production, the number will approach 100 percent, with up to 75 percent of species affected negatively.
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Camille Parmesan didn't mind having her early work denigrated by Rush Limbaugh during his on-air program. "Actually, I was quite pleased with that," she says of the radio show host, who derided her studies on the geographic shifts of a butterfly species because of climate change. "I thought if I got his goat that heavily, then I must be making an impact."
That was in 1996, and since then she has become one of the leading conservation biologists monitoring what rapid climate change is doing to the world's plants and animals. Like many of her colleagues, she warns anyone who will listen of the ecological dangers. But unlike her colleagues, she is lately suggesting a way of saving threatened species that is still unthinkable to many biologists: assisting their migration and colonization.
The controversial approach, she argues, may be the only way to save imperiled species that cannot adapt to the unnatural rate of today's changes or escape to appropriate climes. Transplantation should be done, she says, even if it risks engendering new diseases and pests or other unintended consequences. Some scientists have begun to take her seriously, meeting to discuss the issue and building models that go beyond simple climate projections.
Parmesan did not hold such a view when she published her now famous 1996 study on the plight of Edith's checkerspot butterfly a delicate creature colored with brown, orange and white spots, sometimes no more than a centimeter across. She had spent almost five years trekking into the backcountry along the Pacific coast, from Mexico to Canada, crawling under the insect's plant, a type of snapdragon. Only once did she get chased off the land, in Baja California by someone who acted like "a typical drug lord," she recalls.
The checkerspot is very sensitive to temperature because its host plant dries out in warm temperatures, eliminating the insect's food source while in its caterpillar stage. Scientists already knew that human development and climate were driving down its populations, but Parmesan's systematic science startled everyone: three fourths of the populations at the lowest latitudes had become extinct, whereas only 20 percent of those in Canada had disappeared. Populations at higher altitudes were only one third as likely to go extinct as those at lower, warmer heights.
Soon Parmesan, now at the University of Texas at Austin, noticed similar trends among butterflies in Europe, where records of their domains go back much further. Subsequent analyses conducted with colleagues such as David Easterling of the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C., and Gary Yohe of Wesleyan University uncovered evidence of climate change nearly everywhere they looked. For instance, plants and animals have shifted their ranges by about six kilometers per decade toward the poles during the past quarter of a century. Spring events, such as blooming, frog breeding and migrant bird arrivals, have advanced 2.3 days per decade. Tropical pathogens are moving up in latitude and striking species not adapted to deal with them. About two thirds of the 110 known harlequin frog species in Costa Rica are believed to be extinct, their temperature-weakened immune systems devastated by a lethal fungus itself taking advantage of warmer temperatures.
Last December scientists announced the probable extinction of the first mammal because of climate change: the white lemuroid possum, now gone from Queens land, Australia. The possum, which lived only above 1,000 meters in altitude, could be killed by as little as five hours in temperatures greater than 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit). Although precise predictions are not yet possible, Chris D. Thomas of the University of Leeds in England and his colleagues have found that even under midrange global-warming scenarios, 15 to 37 percent of terrestrial species will be "committed to extinction" by 2050. Add that to existing threats from habitat destruction and migration barriers from towns and highways, and the future of the world's biodiversity looks increasingly thin and vanilla.
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12 Comments
Add Commentis "assisted migration" really a good idea? if creatures are supposed to adapt to the changing environment then wouldn't assisted migration run counter to natural evolution? shouldn't creatures be allowed to evolved in face of the changing environment? and wouldn't that create creatures able to survive in that environment?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisUnfortunately, changes are occuring too rapidly for natural response to keep up. I agree that the idea of assisted migration presents its own set of problems. Very likely the species being relocated will need to be held in cotrolled habitats until their introduction to the wilds of another region.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTo be honest I don't have much faith that the idea will be effective. Our ecosystem's regions have each developed a startling array of interwoven lifeforms which are so specialized and dependent on one another that to pick one and move it to another system, even of similar climate and terrain conditions, can (in my opinion) be viewed as little more than a short stay of execution.
Each species lives in a web of interactions. For a butterfly to be displaced, you have to displace the plants it depends on too. Also to keep it in check you must also displace its predators and the other species the whole system depend on. (Ecology is the science of system interactions). So climate change means we will have to ensure the displacement of whole sytems, even if they do evolve somewhat. Better to fight against climate change!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI thought that too, but I think the concern is that the change is happening at a pace that most species can't evolve fast enough to adapt to. Rapid climate changes such as this just wipe everything out. In this case, even if you wanted to be completely anthropocentric, you'd have to realize that in a mass extinction, seven billion people will quickly run out of food.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI thought that too, but I think the concern is that the change is happening at a pace that most species can't evolve fast enough to adapt to. Rapid climate changes such as this just wipe everything out. In this case, even if you wanted to be completely anthropocentric, you'd have to realize that in a mass extinction, seven billion people will quickly run out of food.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI thought that too, but I think the concern is that the change is happening at a pace that most species can't evolve fast enough to adapt to. Rapid climate changes such as this just wipe everything out. In this case, even if you wanted to be completely anthropocentric, you'd have to realize that in a mass extinction, seven billion people will quickly run out of food.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAssisted Migration? Sounds Biblical to me. Noah tried it, almost got it right except for those damned mosquitoes.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI wonder, if you took two of every species on earth, and took their average masses, how big of a ship you'd need to hold them all. ...not to mention enough food to keep them alive for 40 days, + however many days it took to grow more food once the flood receded and plants started growing again. And then there's the carnivores. How many mice would you have to actually bring to feed the snakes, and how many snakes would you need to bring to feed the owls and...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat'd be a fun problem to work out.
With or without planning, assisted migration is occurring. One may see this in the transfer of unwashed heavy equipment from work site to work site, international trade, the movement of flora and fauna in the pet and landscaping industries.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPerhaps if we do this intentionally and rationally, something good will result. But, as I said, it is occurring and will continue to occur whatever our views on the subject.
It is tantalizingly simple to state but notoriously difficult to solve.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisit says nothing about global warming wow
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisthis says nothing about migration wow wont come here when i have homework
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