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Global Climate Change Digest
A Guide to Information on Greenhouse Gases and Ozone Depletion
Published July 1988 through June 1999

FROM VOLUME 11, NUMBER 9, SEPTEMBER 1998

PROFESSIONAL PUBLICATIONS...
CLIMATE-CHANGE EFFECTS ON ANIMALS

Item #d98sep11

“Long-Term Effects of Elevated CO₂ and Temperature on Populations of the Peach Potato Aphid Myzus persicae and Its Parasitoid Aphidius matricariae,” T. M. Bezemer, T. H. Jones, and K. J. Knight, Oecologia 116, 128-135 (1998).

Model terrestrial ecosystems containing plants, peach potato aphids (an important pest of many crop plants), and a parasitoid of the aphid were subjected to combinations of environments including elevated CO₂ levels and temperatures. Plant biomass and foliar nitrogen and carbon concentrations were not affected by elevated CO₂, but plant biomass decreased and leaf nitrogen concentrations increased with elevated temperatures. Aphid populations increased with both increased temperature and increased CO₂. Parasitism remained unchanged with elevated CO₂ but increased with temperature.

Item #d98sep12

“Biotic Transitions in Global Marine Diversity,” A. I. Miller,Science 281, 1157-1160 (Aug. 21, 1998).

Miller reviewed the relevant literature and found that two major viewpoints have been put forward to explain the changes in diversity of marine biota during the past 550 million years. The first holds that the changes took place over geologic time scales and were brought about by interactions among organisms. The other holds that populations grew and then crashed to extinction and that these mass extinctions reset the diversity of the higher taxa. However, he also found an emerging body of literature that holds that the macroevolutionary processes (such as onshore-offshore diversification) that produce biotic transitions during normal times also operated during mass extinctions. Indeed, from this point of view, relatively rapid regional changes in the environment seem to drive diversification, and diversity that develops quickly in one region is then transferred globally over the long term. As a result, perturbations (including those in climate) at many geographic scales may combine to produce the observed long-term growth in marine-fauna diversity.

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“Potential Effects of Climate Change on Two Neotropical Amphibian Assemblages,” M. A. Donnelly and M. L. Crump,Climatic Change 39, 541-561 (1998).

The authors postulate that increased temperature, dry seasons, and rainfall variability along with decreased soil moisture will negatively affect the reproductive success and prey base of anuran amphibians, which have exhibited global population declines in recent years. They suggest directions for future research to investigate how amphibians in the New World tropics respond to climate change.