(CN) — To us humans, the mounds on the ground are just piles of dirt.
But to some animals, those mounds are much more than that; they’re microclimates. These unique, local microclimates are one way that animals react to climate change, and in a new study published Wednesday in the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution, biologists say they are learning new clues from animals about how we humans might adjust to climate change.
Rising levels of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere are causing temperatures to rise and precipitation patterns to shift. For biologists, a key problem is understanding the effects of climate change on animal species and predicting changes, such as the shifting of species’ ranges and their relative risks of extinction.
For instance, bird nests keep eggs and offspring warm during cool weather and cool in hot weather. Termites build mounds that capture wind and solar energy to drive airflow through their colonies. This helps to stabilize the colonies’ temperature, relative humidity and oxygen levels. Mammals that sleep or hibernate in underground burrows experience stable, moderate temperatures and avoid above-ground extremes. These modifications, known as extended phenotypes, filter climate into local sets of conditions close to the animal, the study said.
“These microclimates represent an underappreciated and highly understudied set of processes that may reveal how species will respond to climate change,” Art Woods, a professor in the University of Montana Division of Biological Sciences, said.
The study on microclimates was authored by a group of researchers from the University of Montana, the University of Wyoming, the University of Tours in France and Stellenbosch University in South Africa.
Researchers say clues from animals’ microclimates reveal how they might adapt to a changing climate. For instance, in the Rocky Mountains of the United States, some animals might try to migrate to a higher, cooler elevation, Woods said. But if animals cannot move to a higher elevation, whether for lack of food or predation, they adapt to where they are.
“Some high-elevation species are at risk because as their habitats warm, they may try to migrate uphill – but sometimes there is no suitable uphill habitat,” Woods said. “The vast diversity of animal and plant life on the planet can serve as a kind of evolved knowledge reservoir if only we can study it, and perhaps leverage some of it, before there is too much disruption.”
In the Rocky Mountains, tent caterpillars are particularly vulnerable to climate change. Tent caterpillars hatch out together and build a silk tent around them. That silk tent provides a platform for organizing their feeding and the tents often warm up far above ambient air temperature.
“The tents act like solar collectors that help the caterpillars warm up and feed and grow faster during cool spring conditions,” he said. Higher climate temperatures may injure or kill the caterpillars in their tents.
Understanding how species like the tent caterpillar adapt could provide insight to the spread of disease, the health of marine and terrestrial ecologies around the world, and whether agriculture and fishing can continue supporting human populations.
“Humans have a long history of developing tools and technologies based on observing how animals solve problems,’” Woods said. “As our climates continue to change, it would be smart to keep an eye out for how animals are solving their local climate problems.”
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