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Research uncovers impact of climate change
AN EXPEDITION to trap moths on Mount Kinabalu in Borneo in 1965 has helped to illustrate the growing impact of climate change and underlined the risk of extinction some species face.
York University has now repeated the research and found that, on average, species had moved uphill by about 67 metres to cope with changes in climate.
The work is believed to be the first demonstration that climate change is affecting the distributions of tropical insects – the most numerous group of animals on Earth – and represents a major threat to global biodiversity.
PhD student I-Ching Chen – first author of the new study – said: "Tropical insects form the most diverse group of animals on Earth but to-date we have not known whether they were responding to climate change.
"The last Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change report showed a gaping hole in the evidence. Our new study is good in that it increases the evidence available, but it is potentially bad for biodiversity."
Professor Chris Thomas, of the university's biology department, added: "As these species get pushed uphill towards cooler conditions, the amount of land that is available to them gets smaller and smaller. Because most of the top of the mountain is bare rock, they may not be able to find suitable habitats, even if the temperature is right. Some of the species are likely to die out."
The new expedition in 2007 was joined by Henry Barlow, one of the members of the original survey, whose enthusiasm for moths helped I-Ching Chen, who is from Taiwan, to come to terms with the sheer diversity of moths she had to identify.
Jeremy Holloway, a research associate at the Natural History Museum in London, and another member of the 1965 expedition, devoted his career to the identification of moths from South East Asia, enabling the research team to identify the new samples.
Armed with the data from 1965, I-Ching and her colleagues set out to repeat the original survey. The research team climbed the mountain and caught moths up to a height of 3,675 metres above sea level.
"Photographs from the 1965 expedition led us back to exactly the same sites sampled 42 years ago", said Dr Suzan Benedick, expedition member and Universiti Malaysia Sabah entomologist.
Once all of the specimens had been caught and identified, the team compared the heights at which each species had been found in 1965 and again in 2007. The scientists say their results revealed a highly statistically significant shift.
However, their work had a positive note. As the highest and coolest location between the Himalaya and New Guinea, Mount Kinabalu represents an extremely important'climate change refuge.
The study is published in the latest edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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Saturday 26 May 2012
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