Comment by A_D_E_P_T
6 hours ago
That form of migration is happening all over the world right now.
Virginia opossums, traditionally associated with the deep south, are now routinely spotted around Toronto, and are moving even further north. Armadillos, though still shy of the Canadian border, have crossed the Ohio River. American alligators, long stopped around Cape Hatteras, are now spotted in the tidal creeks of Virginia’s Eastern Shore. [1] Lobsters are moving north to the Canadian Maritimes from New England, and the blue crabs of Chesapeake Bay are filling the niches they're leaving behind.
It's much the same way in Europe. The European praying mantis used to be a hot-climate central Italian and Balkan insect. Now it's routinely spotted in Germany, has been found as far north as Latvia, and I found one in the usually-chilly Slovenian mountains just the other day!
Wherever you are on the map, look at the climate and ecosystem a few hundred miles south. That's likely where things are heading for you; it's a safe bet that the species that thrive there are the ones that are going to be best adapted to where you live in the second half of the 21st century.
[1] - https://defenders.org/blog/2023/12/why-we-almost-said-see-yo...
Not doubting all this, but the possum thing is interesting.
They were in southern ontario in my youth in essex county ( late 80s ). And google says they were reports as far back as the 60s of scattered sightings.
But not all species are mobile enough, and up north the winters are darker and the summers are lighter.
The shift will be incomplete, other species just go extinct.
In a time of rapid ecological change, highly mobile R-selected species have huge advantages.
And the mother f-ing ticks spreading everywhere on the US east coast!
One of the low-key benefits of Seattle is that the western slopes of the Cascade mountains are largely tick-free. One of the few places in the US that is like that. The east coast is crawling with ticks and always has been.
California has ticks but the Western Fence Lizard helps keep them mostly free of Lyme disease.
> that the western slopes of the Cascade mountains are largely tick-free
still
Maybe you're new here or spent most of your life in the city but at least in the mid Atlantic ticks have always been a problem.
I don't like pesticide but the ticks mean it isn't optional.
I have flanking neighbors who nuke their lawns every month with permethrin. They leave little business signs on the front lawn as spam. I have 14 apple trees and haven't grown an apple in years. It's fine, they are free to do anything and everything they like with their lawns. I just think it would be really neat to grow an apple again. You know, I'm not even a biologist and its probably a fluke I dont appreciate.
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I think the issue is for the animals that actually need a colder climate and/or rely on ice/snow cover - a warming world won't give them a new space to move to (yet).
One anecdote/example that has stuck with me is a heard of caribou in the Canadian north. In winter, they typically dig through the snow to find plants to eat. One year, with rising temperatures, a large area was left with a thick layer of ice on top of the snow. Precipitation was falling as rain (instead of snow) due to warmer temperatures, then freezing overnight creating this thick layer of ice. The caribou couldn't punch through the ice and ended up starving to death resulting in a mass die off.
The ones that survived will have had more efficient metabolisms, or harder hooves that could break through the ice to get to the food, or could have learned a technique to cope. Hopefully their next generation will retain those traits or that culture to adapt.
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Lots of fruit trees need an accumulated number of cold hours every year. I've seen warnings about some plantings already having issues with not producing enough fruit.
We may lose the sea ice and continental glaciers, but we'll probably still retain some ice with the intersection of extreme altitudes and extreme latitudes, at least for our lifetimes. A place like Denali is a lifeboat.
> A place like Denali is a lifeboat.
I think this is more accurate than you may have intended. It will be a single lifeboat, when the Titanic is sinking. Quite useful if you can get on it, and would guarantee survival, but for an awful small number relative to how many would like to be onboard.
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We officially have armadillos in Indianapolis... it's so weird. https://www.wthr.com/article/news/local/armadillos-in-indian...
> Lobsters are moving north to the Canadian Maritimes from New England
Lobsters have been in the Canadian Maritimes for centuries.
> Wherever you are on the map, look... a few hundred miles south
The top half, at least. Sorry.
These are great examples, I have some more ancedotal evidence in Canada, such as the creeping north of the wine industry. Used to be just Point Pelee, then Niagara, and now even the Ottawa Valley has wineries.
There have been wineries in the Okanagan Valley in BC since the 1800s which is farther north than Ottawa. So I am not sure that's a particularly good example.
Because the climate in the Okanagan is, and always has been, just like Ontario.
For those playing at home, it’s a desert-like (if not outright desert) region, and for bonus points it’s on the other end of Canada. Talk about a not “particularly good example”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okanagan
The Okanagan is thousands of kilometers away and the south end connects to the Mojave Desert.
This is not the great counter example you think it is.
Don't know if birds count, but the egret population has exploded in the UK in the last 10 years.
There's zoos here that have them in their exotic bird sections. Always makes me smile as they are often visible even in London parks and rivers.
The worst one is ticks and Lyme desease they carry
They are very common in Sweden, and have always been as far as I know. Are they supposed to be only common in Southern Europe??
I think anywhere there are warm-blooded animals there are ticks.
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