Bird Brains When the Warm Get Going
Global climate change is a real, mea- surable phenomenon, according to a new study, based on the National Audubon Society’s North American Christmas Bird Count. It found that avian species have taken decades to adjust their ranges northward in response to warming winters. Frank La Sorte, a researcher at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, in Ithaca, New York, and lead author of a study supported by the National Science Foundation, says in the Jour- nal of Animal Ecology that because birds are highly mobile and migrate north and south with the changing seasons, they are better able to shift their ranges than less mobile, non-mi- grating species, such as amphibians. “It makes sense that species move slower than the rate at which climate is changing,” says La Sorte. “Many of them need to follow a prey base and a type of vegetation, or they need certain kinds of habitat that will create corridors for movement. Spe- cies are responding under their own time frame.”
The challenge for humans is daunting. “We have to give species the opportunity to respond by provid- ing corridors for movement and long- term maintenance of those corridors,” says La Sorte. “That requires coopera- tion across political boundaries.”
Source: ABC News natural awakenings December 2012 21
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