The Australian National University
ANU News
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Australian birds shrinking, climate cause
Wednesday 12 August 2009
Australian birds have dwindled in size over the last 100 years and
climate change appears to be to blame, say researchers from The
Australian National University and CSIRO.
“Using museum specimens, we measured changes in the size of eight
Australian bird species, and found that they have become smaller by 2 to
4 per cent, over time. That doesn’t sound much but it’s a significant
change,” said research leader Dr Janet Gardner from the Research School
of Biology at ANU.
Birds, like other animals, tend to be smaller in warmer climates,
because smaller bodies lose heat more quickly than larger bodies. As a
result, individuals of the same species tend to be larger near the poles
and smaller near the equator.
“We looked at size patterns of individual species across South-eastern
Australia and found that these gradients have shifted because birds are
getting smaller as temperatures rise. Birds of a size once found near
Brisbane now occur in Sydney, 7 degrees further south,” Dr Gardner said.
The researchers measured the brown treecreeper, grey-crowned babbler,
hooded robin, speckled warbler, jacky winter, yellow–rumped thornbill,
white-browed scrubwren, and the variegated fairy-wren.
They found that the birds appear to be adapting to global warming by
getting smaller, thus minimizing the costs of heat stress. “We’d like to
look at a broader range of species to see if the same pattern of size
changes is evident,” Dr Gardner said.
“How much and how rapidly a species can change in response to rising
temperatures remains to be answered,” she said.
The findings are published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal
Society London. The research team included Dr Leo Joseph at the
Australian National Wildlife Collection, CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems
and Associate Professor Robert Heinsohn at the Fenner School of
Environment and Society at ANU.
The work was funded by the Australian National Wildlife Collection
Foundation.
Filed under: Media Release, ANU College of Medicine Biology and
Environment, Environment, Science
Contacts: For interviews: Dr Janet Gardner 02 6125 9991; Media
assistance: Simon Couper, ANU media office 02 6125 4171, 0416 249 241
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Canberra Ornithologists Group email lists manager
T: 02 6238 3706
M: 0416 231 890
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