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How High-Arctic Reindeer Respond to Extreme Weather Events

Paper Reviewed
Loe, L.E., Hansen, B.B., Stien, A., Albon, S.D., Bischof, R., Carlsson, A., Irvine, R.J., Meland, M., Rivrud, I.M., Ropstad, E., Veiberg, V. and Mysterud, A. 2016. Behavioral buffering of extreme weather events in a high-Arctic herbivore. Ecosphere 7: e01374.

In the face of highly-hyped climate-alarmist claims of near-future catastrophic global warming -- along with their predictions of more frequent and intensified extreme weather events -- there is great concern in some quarters about what might happen to the world's large herbivores if they were exposed to such conditions. How would they survive, for example, if the predicted negative changes in climate negatively impact their current sources of food?

In an effort to answer this question, Loe et al. (2016) analyzed "responses in space use to rain-on-snow and icing events, and their fitness correlates, in wild reindeer in high-Arctic Svalbard." And this work revealed, in their words, that "range displacement among GPS-collared females occurred mainly in icy winters to areas with less ice, lower over-winter body mass loss, lower mortality rate, and higher subsequent fecundity, than the departure area."

In further discussing their findings, the twelve researchers -- hailing from Canada, Norway and the United Kingdom -- write that their study provides "rare empirical evidence that mammals may buffer negative effects of climate change and extreme weather events by adjusting behavior in highly stochastic environments," which facts allowed them to conclude that "under global warming, behavioral buffering may be important for the long-term population persistence in mobile species with long generation time and therefore limited ability for rapid evolutionary adaptation."

Posted 20 October 2016