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Survive the climate variability?
- 언어ENG
- URLhttps://db.koreascholar.com/Article/Detail/287751
Climate and its variability characterize abiotic environment for species on the earth. Increased seasonality in higher latitude and/or pronounced diurnal temperate range in higher ground as well as decreasing mean temperature are major climate gradients to which organisms must adapt through physiological and behavioral plasticity. IPCC AR5 pointed out that climate variability and its regional behavior remain top concerns, which may well pose great challenges to climate change biology. We use Nicrophorus nepalensis (Coleoptera: Silphidae) a wide-distributed burying beetle in low latitude Asia as model species to investigate possible impacts of climate variability on species performance. N. nepalensis is a scavenging species exploring carcasses for feeding and reproduction. To consider their breeding performance, we baited N. nepalensis by small mouse carcasses and measured the rate at which they successfully buried the carcasses into soil. We look at climate variability along elevational gradients of intact forest and open habitats exposure to agricultural activities. The probability of successful breeding is higher in intact forest than that in open habitat with unimodal fashion of peak at 1800m. We found that local climate variability, more specifically, the diurnal temperature range (DTR), impedes successful breeding of N. nepalensis. Despite variable environmental conditions associated with habitat opening, such as increased soil density, reduced leaf litter amount and relative humidity, enlarged DTR seems to be the principal cause of failure. The negative effects of greater DTR on breeding success were confirmed by laboratory experiments. DTR remains stable in primary forests, in contrast to its increase in more disrupted habitats along the same transect. Reducing vegetation cover exposes mountains to radiant heating, a trend with significant elevational effect, resulting in large DTR in high lands. Although N. nepalensis is widely distributed in the mountain areas, non-forest patches support only part of their life cycle, different function groups to support decomposition process at open habitats are expected. Climate change and habitat degradation are among the major drivers of biodiversity loss. Our study highlights land-use and land-cover change (LULCC) in altering local temperature variability and reinforces the concern of its interplay with climate change.
