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Coyotes-Wolves-Cougars.blogspot.com

Grizzly bears, black bears, wolves, coyotes, cougars/ mountain lions,bobcats, wolverines, lynx, foxes, fishers and martens are the suite of carnivores that originally inhabited North America after the Pleistocene extinctions. This site invites research, commentary, point/counterpoint on that suite of native animals (predator and prey) that inhabited The Americas circa 1500-at the initial point of European exploration and subsequent colonization. Landscape ecology, journal accounts of explorers and frontiersmen, genetic evaluations of museum animals, peer reviewed 20th and 21st century research on various aspects of our "Wild America" as well as subjective commentary from expert and layman alike. All of the above being revealed and discussed with the underlying goal of one day seeing our Continent rewilded.....Where big enough swaths of open space exist with connective corridors to other large forest, meadow, mountain, valley, prairie, desert and chaparral wildlands.....Thereby enabling all of our historic fauna, including man, to live in a sustainable and healthy environment. - Blogger Rick

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Wednesday, August 13, 2014

A symposium focusing on climate's effects on predators -- causing cascading effects on whole ecosystems -- will take place on Tuesday, August 12th during the Ecological Society of America's 99th Annual Meeting, held this year in Sacramento, California...................As we have heard from Dr. Cristina Eisenberg and other biologists over the previous weeks and months, trophic carnivores like Wolves, Pumas and Bears send ripples throughout the food web, regulating the effects other animals have on that ecosystem.................... Ecologists are just beginning to understand how the impacts of climate change are affecting predatory keystone species and their ecosystems.............We will continue to report on all research and findings regarding this important topic

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/sciencedaily/plants_animals/ecology/~3/AxWBFyvMvJQ/140811180326.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email(click on this link to read full article)




Climate change, predators, and trickle down effects on ecosystems

Date:
August 11, 2014
Source:
Ecological Society of America
Summary:
Because predator species are animals that survive
 by preying on other organisms, they send ripples
throughout the food web, regulating the effects
 other animals have on that ecosystem. Ecologists
 are just beginning to understand how the impacts
of climate change are affecting predatory keystone
species and their ecosystems

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  1. Kevin S. McCann2
+ Author Affiliations
  1. 1Department of Natural Resource Sciences, Macdonald Campus, McGill University, 21,111 Lakeshore Road, Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue, Quebec H9X 3V9, Canada
  2. 2Department of Zoology, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario N1G 2W1, Canada

    Abstract

    Climate change will likely alter the distribution and abundance of northern mammals through a combination of direct, abiotic effects (e.g., changes in temperature and precipitation) and indirect, biotic effects (e.g., changes in the abundance of resources, competitors, and predators).



     Bioenergetic approaches are ideally suited to predicting the impacts of climate change because individual energy budgets integrate biotic and abiotic influences, and translate individual function into population and community outcomes. In this review, we illustrate how bioenergetics can be used to predict the regional biodiversity, species range limits, and community trophic organization of mammals under future climate scenarios. 

     Although reliable prediction of climate change impacts for particular species requires better data and theory on the physiological ecology of northern mammals, two robust hypotheses emerge from the bioenergetic approaches presented here. First, the impacts of climate change in northern regions will be shaped by the appearance of new species at least as much as by the disappearance of current species. Second, seasonally inactive mammal species (e.g., hibernators), which are largely absent from the Canadian arctic at present, should undergo substantial increases in abundance and distribution in response to climate change, probably at the expense of continuously active mammals already present in the arctic.

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