Sunday, April 19, 2015

Animals adapting to frequent cold snaps

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/04/150409120053.htm





As worldwide temperatures rise and the earth sees extreme weather conditions in both summer and winter, a team of researchers with the University of Florida and Kansas State University have found that that there is potential for insects - and possibly other animals - to acclimate and rapidly evolve in the face of this current climate change.

While much of the emphasis regarding climate change is on overall warming, increased frequency of extreme weather events is also a critical concern. As fall and spring temperatures rise, animals will increasingly have to deal with rapid changes from warm conditions to dangerously cold temperatures as weather fronts sweep through. These “snap freeze” events threaten a variety of plants from agricultural crops to landscaping that are damaged and animals like insects, frogs, and even sea turtles that can suffer from cold.

The ability to respond to longer-term seasonal changes does not impede the ability to respond to rapid changes associated with short-term extreme cold events,” said Daniel Hahn, associate professor of insect physiology with UF’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences’ Department of Entomology and Nematology. “We have identified a series of about 100 candidate genes that could explain the ability of animals to rapidly respond to fluctuating temperatures.”

“Identifying which of these candidate genes actually causes variation in responses to cold snaps will give us the potential to understand whether evolution to climate change can occur in both wild and domesticated animals, allowing us to better predict which species or breeds will be “winners” and “losers” and to better mitigate the effects of anthropogenic climate change on a wide range of organisms from beneficial pollinators to invasive pests,” said Theodore Morgan an associate professor of evolutionary genetics in the Division of Biology at Kansas State University and senior author of the study.
Gerken, Hahn, and Morgan say identifying the genes involved in acclimation to temperature and the genetic relationship between long-term and short-term acclimation provides us with new tools to predict the impacts of an increased frequency of extreme events as a by-product of anthropogenic climate change on animal and plant populations.

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