In the years remaining until 2100, the geographical ranges of many species will have to change much more than at present, because the climate will change at a rate 100 times greater (and more) that the speed with which can adapt the species.
This is the grim conclusion reached by a team of experts from Indiana University in the United States.
Research by the team of Michelle Lawing and P. David Polly, in which was taken as reference to American rattlesnakes, indicates that the speed of future change of habitat shall be two to three orders of magnitude greater (i.e., 100 to 1,000 times greater) than the speed of average change in the past 320 millennia, a long period that included three major glacial cycles and considerable variations in temperature and other climate parameters.
In just 90 years, in the best case, the appropriate geographic areas for these snakes will change 100 times faster than they have in the past 320,000 years. And do not expect other species that things are going much better. The magnitude of this phenomenon is different from any other experienced by those snakes and other species in a long time, maybe even around the time since its inception.
Rattlesnakes are good indicators of climate change because they are cold blooded animals, meaning they cannot themselves regulate their body temperature, so rely on the environment for it.
Polly and Lawing stress that many other agencies will also be affected by climate change and the new study provides a methodlogy for examining what might happen to them.
