To consider how climate change could cause some extinctions, imagine a tiny mountain bird that eats the berries of a particular mountain tree.
That tree can only grow at a specific elevation around the mountain, where it’s evolved over millennia to thrive in that microclimate. As global temperatures rise, both the tree and the bird will be forced to rise too, tracking their microclimate as it moves uphill. But they can only go so far.
“Eventually, they reach the peak, and then there’s nowhere else to go,” says Mark Urban, a biologist at the University of Connecticut.
Scientists call this mountain phenomenon the “escalator to extinction” and it’s just one way climate change is already squeezing plants and animals from their habitats. Researchers have conducted hundreds of studies projecting how different species might respond to different levels of climate change, finding varied results. In an analysis published Thursday in the journal Science, Urban sought to bring all those studies together.
How many species could go extinct from climate change? It depends on how hot it gets.
https://www.npr.org/2024/12/06/nx-s1-5218583/how-many-species-could-go-extinct-from-climate-change-it-depends-on-how-hot-it-gets
https://www.npr.org/transcripts/nx-s1-5218583
Mark Urban
https://ecoevolutionlab.eeb.uconn.edu/
Climate Change Extinctions
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adp4461
Arthur Pass, New Zealand: Kea(Nestor Notabilis)
https://www.arthurspass.com/index.php?page=145
https://keadatabase.nz/