| 325 Arctic Animal By Sofie Bates 1 For animals in the Arctic, life is a jancin} . Seasonal cues, such as warmer spring temperatures or cooler temperatures in the fall, tell animals when to migrate, when to mate, and when and where to find food. Predators and prey, birds and mammals alike follow this natural schedule, and an overall shift of just a few days or weeks could have unknown impacts on these animals and ecosystems. 2 These changes in seasonal timing are already starting — although the shifts differ between species and populations — according to a new study published Nov. 5 in Science that was funded in part by the NASA Arctic-Boreal Vulnerability Experiment (ABoVE). The reseatchers analyzed data from the Arctic Animal Movement Archive (AAMA), a collection of data’ from more. than 200. research studies tracking nearly a hundred species from 1991 to present, in combination with NASA temperature, rainfall, snowfall, and topographic data. They found that Arctic animals’ movement patterns are shifting in different ways, which could disrupt entire ecosystems. / “The Arctic is showing more extreme indications of climate change,” said Gil ae a rofessor and environmental Ineer at Ohio State University ii Columbus, Sea ice is shrinking, rain fea foe es ees and Arctic tundra is in some places and brown in others. “Arctic animals are Tesponding to ihete changes, they're responding quiekly, nd that response is not equal,” said Bohrer Is’ Movement Patterns al : the Climate Changes re Shifting In Different Ways as November 30, 2029 4 The team focused on three examples. a long-term study of eagle migrations, ; massive study on caribou populations, and a multi-species study focusing on severa predator and prey species. 5 In the eagle study, the researchers analyzed when eagles left their wintering grounds to fly north for the summer, based on National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) data collected from 1991 to. 2019. On average, migration started about half a day earlier each year — a change that compounded over 25 years to cause a shift of nearly two weeks. “Basically, climate change is rushing them to go north early,” said Bohrer. The shift ‘was more pronounced for adult eagles than juveniles, suggesting that the juveniles may be missing out on the mating season or the adults may be reaching their. summering grounds before their food sources. © However, the researchers don’t know whether these changes will benefit or harm different animal species, populations, 0 individuals. For example, in the caribou study, it appeared: that ‘certain’ caribou populations were adapting to the change in their surroundings. Bohrer says that we'll likely see some species, individoals, and populations benefitting from climal? change and others harmed by climate change. “But that fact that we see changes is showing that something big is going ™ explained Bohrer. 7 ‘Typically, caribou mate in the ish are pregnant in the winter, and raise th Scanned with CamScannerReading the News 1 young in the spring when food is abundant; this schedule is tightly coordinated with environmental patterns. The team analyzed five caribou populations and found that populations living in the northern Arctic — where things are shifting more rapidly due to climate change — were having offspring earlier to coincide with the changes in their environment, suggesting that these populations are adapting to climate change. However, the southern caribou populations that are experiencing less rapid environmental changes had offspring at their usual time. The timing of having offspring was also affected by the elevation of the population’s home range. Elevation information came from ArcticDEM, a public-private partnership to create digital elevation models that is funded in part by NASA. 5 Lastly, the researchers used data from several studies in the AAMA database to figure “out how ‘various: predator and Prey species — black bears, grizzly bears, caribou, moose and wolves — are affected (33 increased i nd by higher temperatures a! a precipitation. The data for temperature, precipitation in the form of rain and snow came from NASA’s Daily Surface Weather and Climatological Summaries, ot Daymet. ° The trends in movement for different species varied widely: some species move more when summer temperatures are higher while others move less, moose and wolves move less in winters with higher snowfalls, and increased summer rain didn’t seem to change movement patterns for any species. But, overall, predator species seemed to respond to. climate change differently than prey species. That causes a mismatch between predators and the prey they hunt for food.-To determine the impacts of this mismatch, researchers will need to continue monitoring these populations. © “More and more, the ecosystem that should be tightly coordinated is getting out of whack,” said Bohrer. Scanned with CamScanner36 EXTRA READING i logy Global-scale Animal Ecol Changes in Response to By Maryland University 1 Using a new large-scale data archive of animal movement studies, an international team including University of Maryland biologists found that animals are responding in unexpected ways to climate change. The archive contains data from studies across the global Arctic and sub-Arctic, an enormous region that is experiencing some of the most dramatic effects of global warming, including animal declines. 2 After developing the archive, the researchers used it to conduct three case studies that revealed surprising patterns and associations between climate change and the behavior of golden eagles, bears, caribou, moose and wolves. This work demonstrates both the feasibility and importance of studying animal ecology on extremely large scales. A research paper describing the archive and case studies appears in the November 6, 2020, issue of the journal Science. * “P'mreally excited about how this work shows what you can learn from comparing data across populations on a very large scale,” said Elie Gurarie, an associate research scientist in UMD’s Department of Biology and a co-author of the paper. “ would say this is an early example of what we might call global animal movement ecology. We're increasing our ability to monitor the pulse of animal Populations across the Earth and ask big picture questions about what it means.” Large-scale monitorin, ings li ig Of things like Sea-surface temperature and global forest Cover have revealed important information seis Ney sy Reveals Behavioral Climate Change November 5, 204 about the response of Earth’s Systems jy climate change and human activity, Bu big-picture trends in animal behavior have been difficult to study, in part because animal ecology is not traditionally studied across landscapes that span entire regions of the globe, and also because the necessary data are collected by a variety of agencies and jurisdictions and are therefore neither standardized nor easily accessible. 5 To.address these issues, Gurarie and his collaborators spent years building relationships with scientists from nation, regional and First Nations governmens and reseatch groups throughout the Arctic to convey the benefits of sharing data in a global repository that they call the Arctic Animal Movement Archive (AAMA). Currently, the archive includes contributions from researchers from ovet 100 universities, government agencies and conservation groups across 17 countries. 5 The archive includes data from 2! terrestrial. and marine animal ee studies representing more. than a animals between 1991 and the preset Using this data, Gurarie and membes © his lab analyzed the movements of Mr than 900 female caribou from 200) 2017. ‘They found that the iconie [Pt distance migrating caribou are giving | earlier in the spring, roughly tracking of warming. But among the non-™2". mountain and lowland woodland © only the northem sub-populations showing similar changes. While #h°" oq, of these differences remain @ il understanding their behavior Scanned with CamScannerReading the News 1 to anticipating how they will respond as the Arctic continues to warm and many populations continue to decline. 7 “It’s tricky to predict how these trends might impact populations,” Gurarie said. “On the one hand, it can be better to give birth earlier, as it gives the calves more opportunity to grow during the summer season. On the other hand, giving birth too early may mean you literally don’t have time to reach the optimal calving grounds. The ability to look at biological processes, like birth, at such a large scale, across populations and subspecies and over millions of square kilometers, is unprecedented for a species in such aremote and harsh environment. These results reveal patterns that we would not have suspected, and point to further lines of inquiry about everything from caribou evolution to their ability to adapt to environmental changes moving forward.” * Data analysis tools Gurarie developed to study caribou were also used for another case study led by-his collaborators. * Th an analysis comparing movements of more than 100 golden eagles. from 1993 to 2017, Scott LaPoint, a researcher from Columbia University who is now at Black Rock Forest Consortium, found that immature birds migrating north in the spring arrived earlier following mild winters, while adult birds did not. The timing shift for young birds varied in response to a large-scale climate cycle called the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, which is being affected by climate change. Such age- Telated behavior changes could only be Extra Reading Tasks [Bz seen through decades of movement data and may have implications for breeding success. © A third study by Peter Mahoney of the University of Washington looked at the movement speeds of bears, caribou, moose and wolves from 1998 to 2019. His study showed that species respond differently to seasonal temperatures and winter snow conditions. Those differences could influence species interactions, food competition and predator-prey dynamics. scientists expect that other ntinue tomine theAAMA ions about 1 The researchers will cor for answers to pressing questi whether and how animals are responding to achanging Aretic. Meanwhile, the resource continues to expand as more data comes in from currently tracked animals and more researchers add their studies. 2 “This work has given us a_baseline to understand the large-scale picture so we can get a sense of how animals and environments are really interacting across species and across space as the environment changes,” Gurarie said. * Materials provided ‘by University of Maryland. Content may be edited for style and length. Journal Reference: Sarah C. Davidson etal. Ecological insights from three decades of animal movement tracking across a changing iretic. Science, 2020 DOI: sscience.abb7080 hi RMS 1. Read the text and note down some key information about the article, 2. Share your understandings about the article with your friends, Scanned with CamScanner