fuckyeahdevelopmentalbiology:

Climate change may accelerate evolution in some species – but that doesn’t guarantee that threatened populations will cope in the long run. That’s the message of a study that suggests the changing environment is hitting fast forward on evolutionary adaptations.

Arild Husby of the University of Edinburgh, UK, and his team looked at data gathered from a wild population of great tits (Parus major) in the Netherlands that has been monitored since 1955.

Increasingly warm springs over the past four decades mean the songbirds’ biological rhythms are out of sync with nature. Plants are blossoming, fruits are blushing and caterpillars are gorging themselves earlier. Great tit chicks that hatch too late in the season miss out on this unusually early peak in food – especially the abundance of caterpillars – resulting in fewer surviving youngsters and second clutches.

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