© Phil Pickin
The following is a small part of an interesting new report published on the Met Office website, along with a number of others.Climate change is already affecting the UK's wildlife calendar, and it's likely this will continue into the future, according to new research published in the journal Nature. The results suggest that seasonal events - such as the timing of flowering in plants and bird breeding behavior - are generally more sensitive to temperature change, than to changes in precipitation, such as rain and snow. Plants and animals respond differently to temperature changes at different times of year.Seasonal relationships between predators, such as insect-eating birds, and plankton-eating fish, and their prey could be disrupted in future. This could affect the breeding success and survival of these species, with possible consequences for UK biodiversity. The analysis shows that, given these patterns in climate sensitivity, species in the middle of food webs, such as some insect and plankton species - which feed on plants but are themselves fed on by predators - are likely to change their seasonal behavior the most in future.The study was led by ecologists at the UK's Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, working in collaboration with 17 other organisations including the Met Office. The analysis involved more than 370,000 observations of seasonal events including long-term records, spanning 1960 to 2012, covering 812 UK marine, freshwater and dry-land plant and animal species. The variety of species ranges from plankton to plants, butterflies to birds and moths to mammals.To view the fascinating article in full click here.
