Another climate classic today: Animals’ body sizes shrinking from climate change, study finds

Another climate classic today: Animals’ body sizes shrinking from climate change, study finds by University of Cape Town

Nice theory if you can get funding for it:

“All else being equal, larger animals can tolerate cold conditions better than smaller animals, so one could expect that a warming climate is relatively more advantageous for smaller animals,” said Professor Altwegg.

There are 8.7 million species on Earth and this is based on “one” of them:

To investigate this idea and whether it could be true, the research team looked at a group of wagtails living along the Palmiet River.

And a temperature change of less than one fifth of a degree over 23 years:

Based on data from a local weather station near the Palmiet River, the researchers knew that temperatures in the area had increased by 0.18 °C. But they didn’t know how this had affected the birds’ size.

What they found supports the idea that climate change can shrink Earth’s animals.

“Supports” the idea? The study’s big achievement was only that it didn’t extinguish it at the “back of envelope” stage…

Their results showed that as temperature increased along the Palmiet River, the […]