Responses to climate change.

Essay due date: This essay is due at your Week #6 laboratory session. Prepare and submit a hard copy to your instructor, but before the time of your scheduled lab session, submit your essay file into the “SafeAssignment” folder designated for your lab section on Blackboard.

General introduction and background: Increased emissions of greenhouse gases since the industrial revolution have led as predicted to increased global average temperatures, with complex local dynamics (the climate effects are not uniform). There are countless examples of animals and plants changing their migration, timing of life cycle events, and distributional ranges as climate has warmed, especially over the last 50 years. For this essay you will explore how one species, genus, family, order or class of organism has been, or is predicted to be, affected, ecologically or evolutionarily, by climate change. Ecological changes include changes in population size, geographic range, exposure to predators, herbivores, competitors or parasites, life history traits (reproduction or longevity) and role in ecological communities. Evolutionary changes include genetic changes in behavior, form or physiology in response to climate shifts. Living organisms’ ability to adapt will affect their persistence and ecosystem function (as agricultural pests, keystone species, etc.). There are several ways these questions have been addressed; observational studies (such as correlations between population or individual performance in warmer and cooler years), indirect inferences of historical abundance, laboratory or field experiments of the effects of temperature or CO2 levels, simulation models that include different effects of climate variables. For this essay you will investigate either ecological or evolutionary change/s in the face of climate change.

Your objective in developing this essay: Write a full two-page essay (three page maximum, of a concise, information-filled essay) focusing on the question of how a single species or higher taxonomic group of organisms has been affected by recent warming.

Topics can include:

Changes in breeding date in birds vs timing of food availability (focus on one species or species pair, this is sometimes called the ‘mismatch hypothesis)

Changes in reptile (turtles) nesting behavior under changing temperatures

Changes in species migratory patterns

Changes in response to invasive species

Changes in species range (historical record for trees is often good)

Biotic (interactions) vs abiotic (temperature, seasonality) effects on species

Be sure that the information you provide is fully documented with references cited in proper format (see below).

Developing your topic: The 2006 science commentary by Bradley and Holzapfel is a good introduction that everyone should read to understand the topic. I include some other recent reviews of the subject that you can use if they are helpful. Select only one of the above topics to explore, or choose another with the help (and go-ahead) of your instructor, and focus on one or two examples (species). If you are fortunate, you may find some “primary” literature, which is an article appearing in an edited journal, where the article has been “peer reviewed.” Google Scholar is a good place to start, but be careful because it is loaded with “old” material, much of which may not be relevant. Web of Science (qc librarydatabases) is the search engine used by most organismal biologists to search the primary literature.

Be careful in your use of websites and the information they contain, as many are not reliable and even-handed, particularly with sensitive issues.

Questions to address when reading primary literature:

Is this an experimental or theoretical (modeling) study

If it’s a model, how reasonable or well founded are the assumptions?

How might adding an experiment help?

Is this documenting a change that has happened or predicting a change?

What might be an alternative explanation for any change?

Developing the story for your essay: Look over the “rubric” that is posted to Blackboard and use it as a guide as to how the essay will be graded.