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Fruit flies and global warming - Some like it hot
January 29, 2007Flies exposed to heat hardening were much more able to find their way to bait on very hot days than flies that weren't
Researchers working in Australia have discovered ways in which fruit flies might react to extreme fluctuations in temperature. Short-term exposure to high heat stress ("heat hardening") has been known to have negative effects on Drosophila. But Loeschcke and Hoffmann discovered that it can have advantages too. Flies exposed to heat hardening were much more able to find their way to bait on very hot days than were the flies that were exposed to cooler temperatures, but the heat hardened flies did poorly on cool days.
Loeschcke and Hoffmann did field releases with colored flies exposed to different heat hardening treatments to get estimates of a fitness component in the wild. They used the likelihood to be caught at baits in field sites without natural resources as an estimate of fitness in Drosophila. The results showed that heat treated flies were much more often caught at the baits at very hot temperatures while control flies were more often caught at cooler temperatures, while there was an overall balance between negative and positive effects of the heat treatment at intermediate temperatures. As Volker Loeschcke puts it, "a small amount of heat exposure really toughens flies up against a heat wave, but they don't do quite as well when things are cooler." This means that heat hardening is really important in climates where there are hot days over 37 Celsius in summer, but there's not much benefit when it's always warm or always cool. Hardening is likely to become increasingly important for survival as global warming makes our weather more variable.
University of Chicago Press Journals
University of Chicago Press Journals
Global Warming Current Events and Global Warming News RSSIs global warming unstoppable?
In a provocative new study, a University of Utah scientist argues that rising carbon dioxide emissions - the major cause of global warming - cannot be stabilized unless the world's economy collapses or society builds the equivalent of one new nuclear power plant each day.
Oceans' uptake of manmade carbon may be slowing
The oceans play a key role in regulating climate, absorbing more than a quarter of the carbon dioxide that humans put into the air.
Research challenges for understanding landscape changes identified
Nine research challenges and four research initiatives that are poised to advance the study of how Earth's landscapes change were unveiled today in a new report by the National Research Council.
Study: Sea stars bulk up to beat the heat
A new study finds that a species of sea star stays cool using a strategy never before seen in the animal kingdom. The sea stars soak up cold sea water into their bodies during high tide as buffer against potentially damaging temperatures brought about by direct sunlight at low tide.
Drug industry, nonprofits join forces to fight world's neglected diseases
Drug companies and nonprofit organizations are joining forces to develop new drugs and vaccines to target so-called "neglected" diseases that claim millions of lives in the developing world each year.
Health care accounts for 8 percent of US carbon footprint
The American health care sector accounts for nearly a tenth of the country's carbon dioxide emissions, according to a first-of-its-kind calculation of health care's carbon footprint.
Cave Study Links Climate Change to California Droughts
California experienced centuries-long droughts in the past 20,000 years that coincided with the thawing of ice caps in the Arctic.
Reducing greenhouse gases may not be enough to slow climate change
Because land use changes are responsible for 50 percent of warming in the US, policymakers need to address the influence of global deforestation and urbanization on climate change, in addition to greenhouse gas emissions.
Past climate of the northern Antarctic Peninsular informs global warming debate
The seriousness of current global warming is underlined by a reconstruction of climate at Maxwell Bay in the South Shetland Islands of the Antarctic Peninsula over approximately the last 14,000 years, which appears to show that the current warming and widespread loss of glacial ice are unprecedented.
Climate variability impacts the deep sea
Deep-sea ecosystems occupying 60% of the Earth's surface could be vulnerable to the effects of global warming warn scientists writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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