(Press-News.org) As the climate continues to change, it's unclear to what extent different species will be able to keep pace with altered temperatures and shifted seasons. Living organisms are the survivors of previous environmental changes and might therefore be expected to adapt, but are there limits?
According to research to be published in the Open Access journal PLOS Biology on April 1, some species may be much less able to cope with the effects of climate change than previously thought. The study, by Floriane Plard, Jean-Michel Gaillard, Christophe Bonenfant and colleagues, looked at a unique long-term dataset on a population of roe deer in France's Champagne region. They found that this species has failed to adapt to the increasingly earlier arrival of spring, and young are still being born at the same time as they were 27 years ago. The authors show that this has reduced the survival rate of the fawns and could spell disaster for this species and others, as climate change advances.
As the climate changes, it has been widely presumed that many species will adapt with it; either through short-term 'plastic' shifts (for example giving birth earlier in response to environmental cues) or long-term evolutionary adaptations. This has been shown to be the case with some species, for example amongst birds, but data is lacking for other groups. Long-term datasets like the one used in this study can provide invaluable insights.
For roe deer to be successful, the timing of the appearance of spring vegetation must coincide with the time when females are preparing to give birth, to provide nutrition for the milk they will supply to their fawns. Plard and colleagues found that although spring had shifted earlier by two weeks between 1985 and 2011, the timing of birth of fawns had not changed significantly in the same period. This leaves a mismatch, and the failure of the deer to adjust the timing of their reproductive cycle was associated with reduced survival of the fawns and a general downward trend in the growth of the deer population as a whole.
Some birds, such as great tits, have been found to keep up with climate change because their reproduction is cued by temperature, as is their food source. In the case of roe deer, however, it seems that the principal reproductive pacemaker is day-length, a parameter that isn't affected by the warmer spring. Thus a direct consequence of climate change is that an increasing mismatch with a crucial food supply is threatening the survival of a commercially important long-lived mammal in a European country.
We are only just beginning to understand how human activities are affecting the climate, and how in turn those changes will impact biodiversity. The emerging picture is a complex one, but this study provides a sombre warning that not all species should be expected to adapt to changing climates, including species such as roe deer that are (or once were) common and play an important functional role in the ecosystem.
INFORMATION:
Please mention PLOS Biology as the source for this article and include the links below in your coverage to take readers to the online, open access articles
All works published in PLOS Biology are open access, which means that everything is immediately and freely available. Use this URL in your coverage to provide readers access to the paper upon publication:
http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pbio.1001828
Contact:
Jean-Michel Gaillard
Laboratoire ''Biométrie et Biologie E´volutive'' Unité Mixte de Recherche 5558,
Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1
Lyon, France,
jean-michel.gaillard@univ-lyon1.fr
Citation: Plard F, Gaillard J-M, Coulson T, Hewison AJM, Delorme D, et al. (2014) Mismatch Between Birth Date and Vegetation Phenology Slows the Demography of Roe Deer. PLoS Biol 12(4): e1001828. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1001828
Funding: The sources of funding that supported the work presented in this paper include grants from the Office National de la Chasse et de la Faune Sauvage (to FP, JMG, CB, DD, and CW), from the Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (to MH), from the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (to CB and JMG), and from the European Research Council (TC). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
Will roe deer persist? Climate change spells disaster for species unable to keep up
2014-04-02
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
Age-related decline in sleep quality might be reversible
2014-04-02
Sleep is essential for human health. But with increasing age, many people experience a decline in sleep quality, which in turn reduces their quality of life. In a new study publishing April 1 in the Open Access journal PLOS Biology, Scientists at the Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Biology of Ageing in Cologne have investigated the mechanisms by which ageing impairs sleep in the fruit fly. Their findings suggest that age-related sleep decline can be prevented and might even be reversible.
To uncover basic age-related sleep mechanisms, the Max Planck scientists studied the ...
Enhancers serve to restrict potentially dangerous hypermutation to antibody genes
2014-04-02
How B lymphocytes are able to direct mutations to their antibody genes to produce millions of different antibodies has fascinated biologists for decades. A new study publishing in the Open Access journal PLOS Biology on April 1 by Buerstedde and colleagues shows that this process of programed, spatially targeted genome mutation (aka. somatic hypermutation) is controlled by nearby transcription regulatory sequences called enhancers. Enhancers are usually known to control gene transcription, and these antibody enhancers are now shown to also act in marking the antibody genes ...
Going batty for jumping DNA as a cause of species diversity
2014-04-02
The vesper bats are the largest and best-known common family of bats, with more than 400 species spread across the globe, ranking second among mammals in species diversity.
Authors Ray et al., wanted to get at the root cause of this diversity by taking advantage of two vesper bat species whose genomes have recently been sequenced. They speculated that one cause of this diversity might be jumping elements in the genome, called DNA transposons, which are more active and recent in the evolutionary history of this family than any other mammal. Why and how this DNA transposon ...
Likely culprit in spread of colon cancer identified
2014-04-02
New research at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville has implicated a poorly understood protein called PLAC8 in the spread of colon cancer.
While elevated PLAC8 levels were known to be associated with colon cancer, the researchers now have shown that the protein plays an active role in shifting normal cells lining the colon into a state that encourages metastasis.
The work appears April 1 in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.
"We knew levels of this protein are elevated in colon cancer," said ...
Gene therapy improves limb function following spinal cord injury
2014-04-02
Delivering a single injection of a scar-busting gene therapy to the spinal cord of rats following injury promotes the survival of nerve cells and improves hind limb function within weeks, according to a study published April 2 in The Journal of Neuroscience. The findings suggest that, with more confirming research in animals and humans, gene therapy may hold the potential to one day treat people with spinal cord injuries.
The spinal cord is the main channel through which information passes between the brain and the rest of the body. Most spinal cord injuries are caused ...
Mode of action of new multiple sclerosis drug discovered
2014-04-02
This news release is available in German. Just a few short weeks ago, dimethyl fumarate was approved in Europe as a basic therapy for multiple sclerosis. Although its efficacy has been established in clinical studies, its underlying mode of action was still unknown, but scientists from Bad Nauheim's Max Planck Institute for Heart and Lung Research and the University of Lübeck have now managed to decode it. They hope that this knowledge will help them develop more effective therapeutic agents.
Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic inflammatory disease of the central ...
Well-rested flies
2014-04-02
This news release is available in German. Elderly flies do not sleep well – they frequently wake up during the night and wander around restlessly. The same is true of humans. For researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Biology of Ageing in Cologne, the sleeplessness experienced by the fruit fly Drosophila is therefore a model case for human sleeping behaviour. The scientists have now discovered molecules in the flies' cells that affect how the animals sleep in old age: if insulin/IGF signalling is active, the quality of the animals' sleep is reduced and they wake ...
Penn Medicine points to new ways to prevent relapse in cocaine-addicted patients
2014-04-02
(PHILADELPHIA) – Relapse is the most painful and expensive feature of drug addiction—even after addicted individuals have been drug-free for months or years, the likelihood of sliding back into the habit remains high. The National Institute on Drug Abuse estimates that 40 to 60 percent of addicted individuals will relapse, and in some studies the rates are as high as 80 percent at six months after treatment. Though some relapse triggers can be consciously avoided, such as people, places and things related to drug use, other subconscious triggers related to the brain's reward ...
The mammography dilemma
2014-04-01
A comprehensive review of 50 year's worth of international studies assessing the benefits and harms of mammography screening suggests that the benefits of the screening are often overestimated, while harms are underestimated. And, since the relative benefits and harms of screening are related to a complex array of clinical factors and personal preferences, physicians and patients need more guidance on how best to individualize their approach to breast cancer screening.
The results of the review by researchers at Harvard Medical School's Department of Health Care Policy ...
Overuse of blood transfusions increases infection risk
2014-04-01
ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Blood transfusions are one of the most common procedures patients receive in the hospital but the more red blood cells they receive, the greater their risk of infection, says a new study led by the University of Michigan Heath System and VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System.
Researchers analyzed 21 randomized controlled trials for the study that appears in today's Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).
Elderly patients undergoing hip or knee surgeries were most susceptible, with a 30 percent lower risk of infection when fewer transfusions ...