Snakes' movement can't outpace global warming, scientists warn

Snakes' movement can't outpace global warming, scientists warn

Courier-Journal,12/6/11, by James Bruggers, The timber rattlesnake could be displaced from much of its range in the eastern U.S. by climate change projected to take place by 2100. Credit: Creative

Indiana University researchers are further documenting the challenge that critters like rattlesnakes will face in trying to adapt to climate change.

"We find that, over the next 90 years, at best these species' ranges will change more than 100 times faster than they have during the past 320,000 years," said Michelle Lawing, lead author of a newly published paper and a doctoral candidate in geological sciences and biology at IU Bloomington. "This rate of change is unlike anything these species have experienced, probably since their formation."
IU says the study, "Pleistocene Climate, Phylogeny, and Climate Envelope Models: An Integrative Approach to Better Understand Species' Response to Climate Change," was published by the online science journal PLoS One. The co-author is P. David Polly, associate professor in the Department of Geological Sciences in the IU Bloomington College of Arts and Sciences.

Take the timber rattlesnake for example. It's now found throughout the Eastern United States. The study finds that, with a temperature increase of 1.1 degree Celsius over the next 90 years, its range would actually expand slightly into New York, New England and Texas.

However, temperatures are likely to increase even more. So with an increase of 6.4 degrees Celsius, the upper range of current IPCC projections, the rattlers' range would "shrink to a small area on the Tennessee-North Carolina border," the researchers found.

And the eastern diamondback rattlesnake would be displaced entirely from its current range in the southeastern U.S. with a temperature increase of 6.4 degrees.

Basically, snakes can't move fast enough to adapt. The authors suggest they may need some help, with migration routes and they may need to be relocated.