A recent study of avian specimens in Australia has found that various species are becoming smaller over time. The research, which was published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, shows that successive generations of birds have smaller wingspans.
Birds which live in warmer regions around the equator tend to be smaller than their counterparts in cooler regions. This helps the birds to conserve heat but now it appears that climate change has begun to have an effect on wingspans. As temperatures rise the average size of birds, such as the fairy-wren, is reducing.
“We show for the first time that the size of birds have changed geographically with rising temperatures. Birds of a size once found near Brisbane now occur near Sydney – seven degrees further south… Our study is important because it shows a generalized response to some major environmental change over the last 100 years, probably global warming.”
Dr Janet Gardner, of the Australian National University in Canberra
More details here.
Tagged: animals, birds, climate change, eco, global warming
Well well well, that’s an interesting concept that I haven’t heard of before.
It’s hard to know what to make of this, though. Is it a good thing or a bad thing? On first thought, bird-shrinkage doesn’t sound like a good thing, but providing there are no health drawbacks and it’s just a natural response to increased temperatures, I don’t really see what the problem is.
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