He has just published an important paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences titled Impacts of climate warming on terrestrial ectotherms across latitude.
The impact of anthropogenic climate change on terrestrial organisms is often predicted to increase with latitude, in parallel with the rate of warming. Yet the biological impact of rising temperatures also depends on the physiological sensitivity of organisms to temperature change. We integrate empirical fitness curves describing the thermal tolerance of terrestrial insects from around the world with the projected geographic distribution of climate change for the next century to estimate the direct impact of warming on insect fitness across latitude. The results show that warming in the tropics, although relatively small in magnitude, is likely to have the most deleterious consequences because tropical insects are relatively sensitive to temperature change and are currently living very close to their optimal temperature.
What does this tell us? From an interview Curtis did with The Environmental Awareness Report -
The biodiversity of the planet is concentrated in tropical climates, where there is a tremendous variety of species... Insects carry out essential functions for humans and ecosystems — such as pollinating our crops and breaking down organic matter back into its nutrients so other organisms can use them. Insects are essential to the ecosystem.
Its good to hear from Curtis again -sorry, Professor Deutsch - even if the news is grim.
No comments:
Post a Comment