July 18, 2002

GLOBAL WARMING MAY PUSH BATS TO THE LOW ARCTIC

A paper published in the most recent edition of Nature and co-authored by Dr. Murray Humphries, a scientist at the University of Alberta and the University of Aberdeen, has provided insight into the possible future effects of climate change.

Humphries and his colleagues, Dr. John Speakman and Dr. Donald Thomas, analyzed the hibernation habits of the little brown bat (Myotis lucifugus), which is common throughout North America. In particular, they modeled how much fat bats could store for hibernation throughout winter.

Extrapolating that data, they concluded that the bats' habitat range is directly connected to their ability to store fat for hibernation. Thus, because their bodies have a natural limit of fat that they can store, the species currently has a northern range of habitation that stretches from the coastal areas of Alaska, south-east to the mid-latitude areas of the prairies and east across Canada.

The next step of the research was to combine this conclusion with existing climate change models. "By being able to provide a mechanistic explanation of how climate is driving the distribution of the bat, that lets us look into the future and ask where that bat should be able to live in, say, 80 years from now," said Humphries.

If existing climate change predictions hold, then the northern range of the bats' habitats could extend by 5 km per year over the next century. In short, where at the moment you won't find any bats in the area of Fort McMurray, in 60 years, thanks to global warming they will be living there regularly.

The research shows how, in some cases, it might be possible to examine not just the effects of climate change that have already occurred, but also the possible effects of climate change that will likely happen.

"I think that that's obviously what's needed: a more forward-looking approach on climate change to see where animal distributions are apt to be in the future," added Humphries.

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Contact:

Simon Kiss
University of Alberta
780-492-0437
simon.kiss@ualberta.ca

This text derived from http://www.expressnews.ualberta.ca/expressnews/articles/news.cfm?p_ID=2733

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