Frogs and Climate Change

Each organism is intricately woven into the web of life. A weave humanity barely understands. This blog is about frogs and climate change and the notion of extinction.

Frogs are the barometers.

This is an article from the Australian Centre for Ecological Analysis & Synethesis refer http://www.aceas.org.au/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=77&Itemid=79

Extinction risks of frogs under climate change PDF Print E-mail

The current and future impact of climate change on biodiversity is poorly understood but is likely to result in large numbers of extinctions and substantial changes to ecosystem processes. Frog populations have undergone serious declines in recent decades and a third of species are now listed as threatened worldwide. Eastern Australia has been identified as a global hotspot of frog decline. Frogs are a functionally important group with critical dependence on climatic moisture. They are also exposed to threats including habitat loss, disease, predation and wetland degradation. While frog populations are thought to be highly susceptible to future climatic changes, little attention has been directed toward quantifying the risk of extinction due to climate change and the synergistic effects other threats pose. A common approach for predicting species’ responses to climate change uses bioclimatic envelopes. These models use present-day species-climate relationships to project the potential distribution of species under future climates, but are incomplete because they fail to account for important processes that influence extinction. Species responses to climate change will depend on complex processes involving physiological tolerances, population turnover, species interactions and landscape dynamics. Important advances that overcome the limitations of these models include the development of coupled-species modelling, which integrates mechanistic process models with bioclimatic habitat models, and mechanistic habitat models based on physiological budgets of energy and water. This working group will bring together leading ecological modellers, biologists and managers to apply this powerful new approach to Australian frog species. The working group will:

i) produce reliable projections using the most recent frog population and climate data with state-of-the-art modelling approaches;

ii) identify particular groups of species that are most at risk and the critical processes underlying those risks; and

iii) develop effective climate adaptation strategies that address threats to reduce extinction risks.

As responsible stewards we can ‘be the change’ as Gandhi inspired.