研究發(fā)現(xiàn)，氣候變化超過了進化

研究發(fā)現(xiàn)，氣候變化超過了進化

Nature doesn't like to be rushed. But to keep up with climate change, many animals will need to evolve 10,000 times faster than they have in the past, a study suggests.

大自然不喜歡匆忙。但一項研究表明，為了跟上氣候變化，許多動物需要比過去進化速度快1萬倍。

Man-made climate change — fueled by excess greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, namely carbon dioxide — is expected to raise global temperatures by up to 10.8 degrees Fahrenheit (6 Celsius) within the next 100 years. That will transform many ecosystems in just a few generations, forcing wildlife to either evolve quickly or risk extinction.

人為造成的氣候變化——由大氣中過量的溫室氣體，即二氧化碳造成——預(yù)計將在未來100年內(nèi)使全球氣溫升高10.8華氏度(6攝氏度)。這將在短短幾代人的時間內(nèi)改變許多生態(tài)系統(tǒng)，迫使野生動物要么快速進化，要么面臨滅絕的風(fēng)險。

Published online in the journal Ecology Letters, the study concludes that most land-based vertebrate species evolve too slowly to adjust to the dramatically warmer climate expected by 2100. If they can't make high-speed adaptations or move to a new ecosystem, many terrestrial animal species will cease to exist, the researchers report.

發(fā)表在《生態(tài)學(xué)快報》雜志網(wǎng)絡(luò)版上的這項研究得出結(jié)論說，大多數(shù)陸生脊椎動物物種進化太慢，無法適應(yīng)預(yù)計到2100年將顯著變暖的氣候。研究人員報告說，如果它們不能快速適應(yīng)環(huán)境或遷移到一個新的生態(tài)系統(tǒng)，許多陸生動物物種將不復(fù)存在。

Image: NOAA/NASA/UCAR

Some animals will likely be able to survive without evolutionary changes, the researchers point out, either by adopting new behaviors or by chasing their favorite climate across the landscape. Those strategies will only work in limited circumstances, though — species will need fallback food sources, for example, and flexible habitat options.

研究人員指出，一些動物很可能在沒有進化變化的情況下生存下來，要么通過采取新的行為，要么通過在整個景觀中追逐它們喜歡的氣候。不過，這些策略只會在有限的情況下奏效——例如，物種將需要后備食物來源，以及靈活的棲息地選擇。

To find out more, another research team looked at these adaptive responses more carefully. A group of 60 researchers reviewed 10,090 abstracts and extracted data from 71 studies reported in 58 relevant publications. Their findings, published in Nature Communications, showed a lot of animals adjusting to climate change, but as with the previous study, the question mark remained: Are they changing fast enough?

為了找到更多的答案，另一個研究小組更仔細地觀察了這些適應(yīng)性反應(yīng)。一組60名研究人員回顧了1090篇摘要，并從58篇相關(guān)出版物中報道的71篇研究中提取數(shù)據(jù)。發(fā)表在《自然通訊》雜志上的研究結(jié)果顯示，很多動物都在適應(yīng)氣候變化，但與之前的研究一樣，問題依然存在:它們的變化速度夠快嗎?

Many of the studies focused on birds, which are relatively easy to study because we have a broad window into their behavioral changes like how early they breed and if they move up their nesting time to coincide with the presence of more bugs. But digging into that data makes it clear that those behavioral changes certainly help, but they are not happening fast enough.

很多研究都集中在鳥類身上，這相對來說比較容易研究，因為我們對鳥類的行為變化有一個廣闊的窗口，比如它們繁殖的時間有多早，以及它們是否會提前筑巢時間，以適應(yīng)更多昆蟲的出現(xiàn)。但深入研究這些數(shù)據(jù)可以清楚地看到，這些行為變化肯定會有所幫助，但它們發(fā)生的速度還不夠快。

Birds can adapt to climate change by changing the time they lay their eggs. (Photo: Vishnevskiy Vasily/Shutterstock)

As lead author Viktoriia Radchuk of the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research told Matt Simon of Wired, "We're experiencing something on the order of 1,000 times faster change in temperature than what was seen in paleo times ... There are limits to these adaptive responses, and the lag is getting too big."

萊布尼茨動物園和野生動物研究所的維克托利亞·拉德查克告訴《連線》雜志的馬特·西蒙，“我們正在經(jīng)歷的氣溫變化速度是舊石器時代的1000倍……這些適應(yīng)性反應(yīng)是有限度的，而且滯后越來越大。”