Saturday, August 17, 2013

Study finds climate change is causing modifications to marine life behavior




Read this in full at: http://phys.org/news/2013-08-ucsb-climate-modifications-marine-life.html#jCp


UCSB study finds climate change is causing modifications to marine life behavior
Warming oceans are causing marine species to change breeding, feeding, and migration timing. Credit: University of California - Santa Barbara
Oceans cover 71 percent of the Earth's surface, yet our knowledge of the impact of climate change on marine habitats is a mere drop in the proverbial ocean compared to terrestrial systems. An international team of scientists set out to change that by conducting a global meta-analysis of climate change impacts on marine systems.

Counter to previous thinking, marine species are shifting their geographic distribution toward the poles and doing so much faster than their land-based counterparts. The findings were published in Nature Climate Change.
The three-year study, conducted by a working group of UC Santa Barbara's National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) and funded by the National Science Foundation, shows that warming oceans are causing marine species to change breeding, feeding, and migration timing as well as shift where they live. Widespread systemic shifts in measures such as distribution of species and phenology—the timing of nature's calendar—are on a scale comparable to or greater than those observed on land.


Read this in full at: http://phys.org/news/2013-08-ucsb-climate-modifications-marine-life.html#jCp

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