Research published today, December 2nd shows that scientists who study Yellowstone National Park's wolf population have developed a way to predict how changes in the environment will affect these animals, including how many can survive, their size and genetics.
This information can be used to predict how wolves of the future will respond to climate change and help conservationists respond.
Scientists have shown before that persistent changes caused by climate change such as coat color and lifespan can have a profound effect on future populations.
But they have not had the tools to predict the effect of these changes. This study uses a powerful mathematical model to providepredictions for future populations.
"We know that climate change is having an impact on the lives of animal species around the world. This is clear through the changes we've seen in their population sizes, as well as their body sizes, but what has not been so clear is what underlies these changes, said primary investigator, Professor Tim Coulson, Department of Life Sciences at Imperial College London.
“This work provides a relatively easy way for biologists to investigate how, and why, environmental change impacts both the ecology and near term evolutionary future of species."
Gray wolves (Canis lupus) were reintroduced to Yellowstone in 1995, having been driven away by settlers earlier in the century. Currently, just close to 150 remain.
The scientists examined 15 years of data about Yellowstone gray wolves' biological traits and demographics across a range of 'good' years, when wolves thrived, and 'poorer' years when they did not. They were then able to investigate how the changing frequency of good and bad years influenced population size, genetics, body size and the life history of Yellowstone wolves.
Their results showed that the wolf population was more greatly affected by consistent overall changes in the environment than it was by changes in the magnitude of year-to-year fluctuations. They also foresee that the future consequences of environmental change on wolf characteristics will depend upon which parts of the wolf's life cycle are most strongly impacted.
The next steps are to apply the methods to species ranging from mosquitoes to crocodiles, and to test model predictions in the laboratory and the field. The results of this work will show how such models can be used to establish conservation policy.
This research gives us a way to predict with “unprecedented detail how populations of many different animals will respond to environmental change, including those animals threatened with extinction.”
This study appeared in Science.
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