Many Vertebrates will have to Evolve "10,000 Times faster" to Adapt to Climate Change

To live on a warmer earth in the future, many vertebrates would have to evolve about 10,000 times faster than they have in the past, according to a new study.

Animals and plants adapt to survive. But, to match - up with the current changes in the environment, they'd have to evolve much faster than they do now. The study was conducted by a team of researchers led by John J. Wiens, an ecologist from University of Arizona.

According to a recent International Union for Conservation of Nature, about 21,000 species of plants and animals face extinction due to habitat loss and climate change. In the present study, researchers looked at the survivability of vertebrates in the near future.

For the study, the team used data from 540 species of terrestrial vertebrates such as amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals. They then compared their rates of evolution to the rates of climate change expected to occur in the next 100 years.

They found that very few of the current vertebrates will survive the climate change as they are evolving at a very slow rate.

"Every species has a climatic niche which is the set of temperature and precipitation conditions in the area where it lives and where it can survive. For example, some species are found only in tropical areas, some only in cooler temperate areas, some live high in the mountains, and some live in the deserts," said John J. Wiens, a professor in UA's department of ecology and evolutionary biology in the College of Science. "

Wiens said that most vertebrates adapt to different climatic conditions at a rate of about 1 degree Celsius in over a million years. It is estimated that, by the end of this century, the earth would be warmer by 4 degree Celsius, meaning that at least some species in a family would go extinct since they wouldn'tbe able to keep up with the climate change.

Researchers based their studies on phylogenie, which are evolutionary family trees that show how a species is related with other species. The tree is based on genetic data and even shows when the species split from others of its kind. In the study, evolutionary trees of 17 families were studied, which included data on frogs, crocodiles, birds and mammals.

This data was then combined with data available on climate change to see how long the species would take to adapt to variations in climate.

"Basically, we figured out how much species changed in their climatic niche on a given branch, and if we know how old a species is, we can estimate how quickly the climatic niche changes over time," Wiens explained in a news release from the University.

"According to our data, almost all groups have at least some species that are potentially endangered, particularly tropical species," he added.

The study found that some species might change their habitat to survive the rise in temperature, such as they could move to colder areas in the Northern Hemisphere. But, some species might not be able to make the transition or would face competition from the native population.

A related study had found that about 82 percent fish in California would be extinct by the end of this century due to climate change and arrival of non-native fish species.

The study is published in the journal Ecology Letters.