While climate change will challenge the fitness of many species, others will benefit from new enviro

While climate change will challenge the fitness of many species, others will benefit from new environmental conditions that are better suited to their needs. For example, recent research suggests that Adélie penguins (Pygoscelis adeliae) have been benefitting from glacial retreat in Antarctica since the last ice age, with populations increasing by an astonishing 135 times over the past 14,000 years. As Adélies nest on bare ice-free ground, warming temperatures have provided them with much more space in which to breed. Interestingly, although glacial retreat has been the main driver of changes in population at scales over thousands of years, short-term studies over years or decades have found the most important factor to be sea ice extent, which affects the penguins’ ability to feed. When we are trying to predict how populations might respond to climate change, we should therefore think about not only drivers of immediate fluctuations in survival rates, but also long-term population trends.Ref: Younger J. et al., 2015. Proliferation of East Antarctic Adélie penguins in response to historical deglaciation. BMC Evolutionary Biology 15: 236 [link] -- source link

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