Too hot for the devil? Did climate change cause the mid-Holocene extinction of the Tasmanian devil (Sarcophilus harrisii) from mainland Australia? ...
The possible role of climate change in late Quaternary animal extinctions is hotly debated, yet few studies have investigated its direct effects on animal physiology to assess whether past climate changes might have had significant impacts on now-extinct species. Here we test whether climate change...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Dataset |
| Language: | English |
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Dryad
2021
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.2v6wwpzpx https://datadryad.org/stash/dataset/doi:10.5061/dryad.2v6wwpzpx |
| Summary: | The possible role of climate change in late Quaternary animal extinctions is hotly debated, yet few studies have investigated its direct effects on animal physiology to assess whether past climate changes might have had significant impacts on now-extinct species. Here we test whether climate change could have imposed physiological stress on the Tasmanian devil (Sarcophilus harrisii) during the mid-Holocene, when the species went extinct on mainland Australia. Physiological values for the devil were quantified using mechanistic niche models of energy and water requirements for thermoregulation, and soil-moisture-based indices of plant stress from drought to indirectly represent food and water availability. The spatial pervasiveness, extremity, and frequency of physiological stresses were compared between a period of known climatic and presumed demographic stability (8000-6010 BP) and the extinction period (5000-3010 BP). We found no evidence of widespread negative effects of climate on physiological ... : Macroclimate For paleoclimate assessment we downloaded bias-corrected data on monthly temperature (min and max), precipitation, and relative humidity using PaleoView, a free software that generates paleoclimate data at different temporal scales at a 2.5° × 2.5° resolution (Fordham et al. 2017). We selected an area cropped to Longitude 112.5°E- 155°E, Latitude 45°S to 10°S. We took ten-year averaged monthly climate variables centred on each ten-year period for 8000-2000 BP; i.e., the years 5010 BP (averaged from 5015 BP to 5006 BP) and 5000 BP (averaged from 5005 BP to 4996 BP) were taken. The PaleoView data were generated from the TRaCE21ka experiment (Liu et al. 2009; Otto-Bliesner et al. 2014) that uses the Community Climate System Model version 3 (Otto-Bliesner et al. 2006; Yeager et al. 2006), a global coupled atmosphere-ocean-sea ice-land general circulation model that includes a dynamic global vegetation module. The microclimate model that we used also requires cloud cover and wind speed data. This ... |
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