What is the outlook for desert bird communities in light of expected global temperature increases on Earth?
Blair Wolf, an associate professor of biology at the University of New Mexico, and his collaborator Andrew McKechnie from the University of Pretoria, South Africa, have been studying how increasing global temperatures will impact desert bird populations. They have found that during heat waves, increases in air temperatures of as little as two degrees Fahrenheit can double the rate of water loss in a small bird and importantly impact its survival time. Wolf will discuss their findings at the Global Change and Global Science: Comparative Physiology in a Changing World conference from August 4-7, 2010 in Westminster, Colorado. Predicting Who Will Be the Victims The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicts that the average temperature of the planet will rise between 3.5 and 6.5 degrees Fahrenheit over the next hundred years. This may not seem like much to the average person, but according to Wolf, these changes could be disastrous for birds and some mammals because of the
