That climate change will drive many animals to extinction is a tragic but unavoidable fact. (So long, 168 species of amphibians and counting; we hardly knew ye.) But on the flip side, the evolutionary pressures of climate change will drive the development of new species -- and it's already happening....
About 50 million years ago—10 million years after the dinosaur's demise—the planet went through a period called the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum in which temperatures rose 12 degrees in 10,000 years. That increase changed rainfall patterns and ocean acidity, causing a massive species extinction. But many species survived and evolved into their modern descendants. Right now might mark the very beginning of a similar period of every-species-for-itself, as plants and animals adapt to climate change with striking quickness.
The advantage in this evolutionary race goes to warm-weather animals, who are taking territory and precious food sources from their cool-weather cousins. "Species that typically would be restricted to the tropics or subtropics are increasingly found north of where they were," says evolutionary biologist Stephen Palumbi of Stanford
University, author of The Evolution Explosion. Swordfish traditionally seen in the Gulf of Mexico and Mediterranean have been spotted off the coast of Norway; shallow-water squid that normally call California waters home have been found as far north as Alaska. As these and other species commandeer space and resources, they bring with them their arsenal of DNA, so that their descendants will be even better biologically suited for warmer conditions.
Unfortunately, the creatures that flouorished most during the
Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum were insects and bats. So rather than a host of new charismatic megafauna and cuddly furballs, we'll get oodles of creepy crawlies.
Species Explosion [Smithsonian Magazine]
