Climate Change Perks
There are few real perks to climate change but apparently this is one of them.
Subordinate grey seals are taking advantage of rising temperatures and falling rainfall to mate more often.
Due to climate change female grey seals are being forced to travel further for drinking water – removing them from the watchful eye of the dominant males and allowing the subordinate males to take advantage.
So while climate change will most likely erase thousands of different
species of plants and animals, it may actually increase the diversity of specific animals by giving a leg up to males who aren’t usually as successful during breeding season.
The down side to this is I don’t think climate change will have the same effect on the human race, though I hear polygamy is making a comeback.
2 Responses to “Climate Change Perks”
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December 18th, 2006 at 9:28 am
But in the world of natural selection – isn’t it quite likely that the non-dominant males are less-capable of survival? Thus the gene pool is actually weakened by the increased breeding of less-hardy individuals? I don’t know if “increasing diversity” is really the right way to look at it – it seems to my non-geneticist/non-scientist eye this is still problematic to ecosystem diversity and survival rates.
January 24th, 2007 at 12:21 pm
The environmental site is truly neat extraordinary and wonderful. Keep up the great work.