scholarly journals Does climate warming influence sexual chemical signaling?

2019 ◽  
Vol 69 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-93 ◽  
Author(s):  
Astrid T. Groot ◽  
Z. Valentina Zizzari

Abstract Global climate is changing at a rapid pace and the pivotal question is if the rate and extent of species’ responses to stressful events enable them to persist in a changing world. Although the consequences of rapid environmental changes on animal life-history traits are receiving considerable attention, our understanding of how temperature fluctuations affect sexual chemical communication in animals is scarce. Male-female interactions often depend on pheromone detectability and sudden shifts in environmental temperature are expected to disrupt communication between potential mates. Whether organisms can adapt to temperature-induced changes at both signaller and receiver levels is virtually unexplored. In this perspective paper, we first provide a broad overview of the sex pheromone pathway, from biosynthesis to detection, and outline the importance of chemical-based mate choice. Finally, through several study cases, we highlight how thermal stress may interfere with chemical communication between the sexes, and discuss the potential evolutionary consequence of temperature stress.

2007 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
pp. 149-168 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erik J. Ekdahl

Average global temperatures are predicted to rise over the next century and changes in precipitation, humidity, and drought frequency will likely accompany this global warming. Understanding associated changes in continental precipitation and temperature patterns in response to global change is an important component of long-range environmental planning. For example, agricultural management plans that account for decreased precipitation over time will be less susceptible to the effects of drought through implementation of water conservation techniques.A detailed understanding of environmental response to past climate change is key to understanding environmental changes associated with global climate change. To this end, diatoms are sensitive to a variety of limnologic parameters, including nutrient concentration, light availability, and the ionic concentration and composition of the waters that they live in (e.g. salinity). Diatoms from numerous environments have been used to reconstruct paleosalinity levels, which in turn have been used as a proxy records for regional and local paleoprecipitation. Long-term records of salinity or paleoprecipitation are valuable in reconstructing Quaternary paleoclimate, and are important in terms of developing mitigation strategies for future global climate change. High-resolution paleoclimate records are also important in groundtruthing global climate simulations, especially in regions where the consequences of global warming may be severe.


Author(s):  
Mariana BĂLAN ◽  
Simona Maria STĂNESCU

The movement of people due to environment changes is not a new phenomenon. Despite this, only in the most recent 20 years, the international community has begun to acknowledge it as an unprecedented challenge in terms of sustainable resources involved. All over the world, the number of storms, droughts and floods has tripled in the last 30 years, with devastating effects on communities. The paper presents a brief analysis of global climate change in recent years and human mobility due to this phenomenon. The research is based on international regulations addressing the interdependencies between environmental change and migration. The climate risk management with impact on human mobility involves economic, political, cultural, and demographic factors. It also shows how a devastating natural disaster shapes people's mobility towards a more friendly environment protected shelter. The development of resilience community strategies implies a joint effort of communities and stakeholders in protecting human beings against effects of natural disasters.


2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. 1165-1180 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karsten Schittek ◽  
Sebastian T. Kock ◽  
Andreas Lücke ◽  
Jonathan Hense ◽  
Christian Ohlendorf ◽  
...  

Abstract. High-altitude cushion peatlands are versatile archives for high-resolution palaeoenvironmental studies, due to their high accumulation rates, range of proxies, and sensitivity to climatic and/or human-induced changes. Especially within the Central Andes, the knowledge about climate conditions during the Holocene is limited. In this study, we present the environmental and climatic history for the last 2100 years of Cerro Tuzgle peatland (CTP), located in the dry Puna of NW Argentina, based on a multi-proxy approach. X-ray fluorescence (XRF), stable isotope and element content analyses (δ13C, δ15N, TN and TOC) were conducted to analyse the inorganic geochemistry throughout the sequence, revealing changes in the peatlands' past redox conditions. Pollen assemblages give an insight into substantial environmental changes on a regional scale. The palaeoclimate varied significantly during the last 2100 years. The results reflect prominent late Holocene climate anomalies and provide evidence that in situ moisture changes were coupled to the migration of the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ). A period of sustained dry conditions prevailed from around 150 BC to around AD 150. A more humid phase dominated between AD 200 and AD 550. Afterwards, the climate was characterised by changes between drier and wetter conditions, with droughts at around AD 650–800 and AD  1000–1100. Volcanic forcing at the beginning of the 19th century (1815 Tambora eruption) seems to have had an impact on climatic settings in the Central Andes. In the past, the peatland recovered from climatic perturbations. Today, CTP is heavily degraded by human interventions, and the peat deposit is becoming increasingly susceptible to erosion and incision.


2018 ◽  
Vol 45 (23) ◽  
pp. 13070-13079 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. R. Arnold ◽  
D. Lombardozzi ◽  
J.‐F. Lamarque ◽  
T. Richardson ◽  
L. K. Emmons ◽  
...  

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Justine Briard ◽  
Marc de Rafélis ◽  
Emmanuelle Vennin ◽  
Mathieu Daëron ◽  
Valérie Chavagnac ◽  
...  

<p>The Cenozoic period encompasses the last transition from the “greenhouse” climate of the late Early Eocene (~50 Ma) to our modern “icehouse” climate with its much lower CO<sub>2</sub> levels, significant polar glaciation and major sea level drop. The Eocene-Oligocene transition (EOT), that marks the first major ice-sheet build-up on Antarctica, has been extensively studied as it represents the entrance into an icehouse mode. Identification of this major step of Antarctic ice-sheet build-up strongly relies on δ<sup>18</sup>O and Mg/Ca benthic foraminifera records from ODP / DSDP sites. By contrast, few records currently exist from coastal environments despite the presence of abundant fossil archives, like bivalve shells. Yet palaeoenvironmental records from these peculiar coastal sites could bring information on how they react to global climate changes and help to further understand the behavior of our climate system. In this study, we applied a multi-proxy strategy coupling δ<sup>18</sup>O, δ<sup>13</sup>C, clumped isotopes (Δ<sub>47</sub>), strontium isotopes (<sup>87</sup>Sr/<sup>86</sup>Sr) analyses on aragonitic and calcitic bivalves and sediments recovered from the Isle of Wight (London-Paris Basin, Northeastern Atlantic Ocean) to provide additional constrain on environmental changes in this region across the Eocene-Oligocene Transition (~37.8–33 Ma).</p><p>Our new coupled δ<sup>18</sup>O and Δ<sub>47 </sub>dataset highlights a marked decrease in local seawater temperatures (~ 8°C) coupled to a drop in local seawater δ<sup>18</sup>O, likely linked to the sea level drop associated with ice-cap formation and an evolution toward more proximal, brackish environment in this region (that is apparent from sediment facies evolution). We estimate the salinity decrease recorded at the local scale from the Eocene to the Oligocene as reaching about 6 PSU, from 31 to 25 PSU. Strontium isotope analyses of the bivalves support this interpretation, showing values close to that of seawater up to the EOT but a marked deviation from contemporaneous global seawater <sup>87</sup>Sr/<sup>86</sup>Sr values toward more radiogenic values afterward. This positive deviation is in agreement with an evolution toward more proximal environments, subjected to larger freshwater inputs.</p>


2015 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 221-241 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. H. C. Bosmans ◽  
F. J. Hilgen ◽  
E. Tuenter ◽  
L. J. Lourens

Abstract. The influence of obliquity, the tilt of the Earth's rotational axis, on incoming solar radiation at low latitudes is small, yet many tropical and subtropical paleoclimate records reveal a clear obliquity signal. Several mechanisms have been proposed to explain this signal, such as the remote influence of high-latitude glacials, the remote effect of insolation changes at mid- to high latitudes independent of glacial cyclicity, shifts in the latitudinal extent of the tropics, and changes in latitudinal insolation gradients. Using a sophisticated coupled ocean–atmosphere global climate model, EC-Earth, without dynamical ice sheets, we performed two experiments of obliquity extremes. Our results show that obliquity-induced changes in tropical climate can occur without high-latitude ice sheet fluctuations. Furthermore, the tropical circulation changes are consistent with obliquity-induced changes in the cross-equatorial insolation gradient, implying that this gradient may be used to explain obliquity signals in low-latitude paleoclimate records instead of the classic 65° N summer insolation curve.


Author(s):  
David G. Anderson ◽  
Kirk A. Maasch

As the twenty-first century winds onward, it is becoming increasingly clear that understanding how climate affects human cultural systems is critically important. Indeed, it has been argued by many researchers that how we respond to changing global climate is one of the greatest scientific and political challenges facing our planetary technological civilization, comparable and closely intertwined with concerns about biological or nuclear warfare, famine, disease, overpopulation, or environmental degradation. By any reasonable evaluation of the evidence, this century, and likely the several centuries that follow it, will be characterized by dramatic climate change, perhaps as significant in terms of its impact on our species as any climatic episodes that have occurred in the past. What we don’t know with much certainty is how these environmental changes will play out across the planet, and how individuals as well as nation states will respond to them. Archaeology has a major role to play in helping us move through this period of crisis, however, by showing us how human cultures in the past responded to dramatic changes in climate. As the work of many archaeological scholars has shown, climate change has not invariably proven to be a bad thing: it is how people respond to it that is critical (e.g. Anderson et al. 2007b; Cooper and Sheets 2012; Crumley 2000, 2006, 2007; Hardesty 2007; McAnany and Yoffee 2010; McIntosh et al. 2000; Redman 2004a; Sandweiss and Quilter 2008; Sassaman and Anderson 1996; Tainter 2000). Archaeology working in tandem with a host of palaeoenvironmental and historical disciplines has lessons for our modern world and, as this volume demonstrates, we as a profession are making great strides in getting our message out. Perhaps the most important lesson from the past is that people, through their actions, are the drivers of cultural change, including response to climate change. Societies are not, however, monolithic entities that ‘chose’ to succeed or fail; people as individuals, groups, or factions through their actions generate outcomes, and often some demonstrate remarkable flexibility and resilience (Cooper and Sheets 2012; Diamond 2005; McAnany and Yoffee 2010).


2013 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 687-697 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Orain ◽  
V. Lebreton ◽  
E. Russo Ermolli ◽  
A.-M. Sémah ◽  
S. Nomade ◽  
...  

Abstract. The palaeobotanical record of early Palaeolithic sites from Western Europe indicates that hominins settled in different kinds of environments. During the "mid-Pleistocene transition (MPT)", from about 1 to 0.6 Ma, the transition from 41- to 100-ka dominant climatic oscillations, occurring within a long-term cooling trend, was associated with an aridity crisis which strongly modified the ecosystems. Starting from the MPT the more favourable climate of central and southern Italy provided propitious environmental conditions for long-term human occupations even during the glacial times. In fact, the human strategy of territory occupation was certainly driven by the availabilities of resources. Prehistoric sites such as Notarchirico (ca. 680–600 ka), La Pineta (ca. 600–620 ka), Guado San Nicola (ca. 380–350 ka) or Ceprano (ca. 345–355 ka) testify to a preferential occupation of the central and southern Apennines valleys during interglacial phases, while later interglacial occupations were oriented towards the coastal plains, as attested by the numerous settlements of the Roma Basin (ca. 300 ka). Faunal remains indicate that human subsistence behaviours benefited from a diversity of exploitable ecosystems, from semi-open to closed environments. In central and southern Italy, several palynological records have already illustrated the regional- and local-scale vegetation dynamic trends. During the Middle Pleistocene climate cycles, mixed mesophytic forests developed during the interglacial periods and withdrew in response to increasing aridity during the glacial episodes. New pollen data from the Boiano Basin (Molise, Italy) attest to the evolution of vegetation and climate between MIS 13 and 9 (ca. 500 to 300 ka). In this basin the persistence of high edaphic humidity, even during the glacial phases, could have favoured the establishment of a refuge area for the arboreal flora and provided subsistence resources for the animal and hominin communities during the Middle Pleistocene. This could have constrained human groups to migrate into such a propitious area. Regarding the local climate evolution during the glacial episodes, the supposed displacement from these sites could be linked to the environmental dynamics solely due to the aridity increase, rather than directly to the global climate changes.


2016 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 181-200 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans R. Schultz

AbstractGrapevines are cultivated on six out of seven continents, between latitudes 4° and 51° in the Northern Hemisphere and between latitudes 6° and 45° in the Southern Hemisphere across a large diversity of climates (oceanic, warm oceanic, transition temperate, continental, cold continental, Mediterranean, subtropical, attenuated tropical, and arid climates). Accordingly, the range and magnitude of environmental factors differ considerably from region to region and so do the principal environmental constraints for grape production. The type, number, and magnitude of environmental constraints are currently undergoing changes due to shifts in climate patterns already observed for the past and predicted for the future. These changes are already affecting grape composition with observed changes in sugar and acidity concentrations. As with other components such as polyphenols or aroma compounds, their relationships to environmental changes are more difficult to quantify. In general, one can divide the expected climatic changes during the grape-ripening period into two scenarios: warmer and dryer and warmer and moister, with different responses for red and white grape varieties. The production challenges within this broad separation are vastly different, and the strategies to ensure a sustainable product need to be adapted accordingly. The economic impact of these changes is difficult to assess. An in-depth analysis is necessary to construct relevant scenarios and risk analysis for individual regions and to quantify the costs and/or benefits of regional climate developments. (JEL Classifications: Q1, Q54)


1993 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 104 ◽  
Author(s):  
S Archer

Human-induced changes in atmospheric chemistry and meteorology have the potential to alter a broad array of ecosystem processes over a range of temporal and spatial scales. These may have direct and indirect effects that could influence management strategies and landscape response to disturbances associated with natural events and land use. The extent to which forecasted global changes are effective in altering local ecosystem properties will depend upon a variety of factors. In this paper, I address species life history traits and community and landscape properties that can be used by land managers to evaluate potential manifestations of global change on a local scale.


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