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Climate Change Could Wipe Out a Third of Parasite Species, Study Finds (nytimes.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times (Warning: source may be paywalled, alternative source): Recently, scientists carried out the first large-scale study of what climate change may do to the world's much-loathed parasites. The team came to a startling conclusion: as many as one in three parasite species may face extinction in the next century. As global warming raises the planet's temperature, the researchers found, many species will lose territory in which to survive. Some of their hosts will be lost, too. Researchers have begun carefully studying the roles that parasites play. They make up the majority of the biomass in some ecosystems, outweighing predators sharing their environments by a factor of 20 to 1. For decades, scientists who studied food webs drew lines between species -- between wildebeest and the grass they grazed on, for example, and between the wildebeest and the lions that ate them. In a major oversight, they didn't factor in the extent to which parasites feed on hosts. As it turns out, as much as 80 percent of the lines in a given food web are links to parasites. They are big players in the food supply.
Some researchers had already investigated the fate of a few parasite species, but Colin J. Carlson, lead author of the study and a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, and his colleagues wanted to get a global view of the impact of climate change. Some kinds won't lose much in a warming world, the study found. For instance, thorny-headed worms are likely to be protected because their hosts, fish and birds, are common and widespread. But other types, such as fleas and tapeworms, may not be able to tolerate much change in temperature; many others infect only hosts that are facing extinction, as well. In all, roughly 30 percent of parasitic species could disappear, Mr. Carlson concluded. The impact of climate change will be as great or greater for these species as for any others studied so far. The study has been published in Science Advances.
Some researchers had already investigated the fate of a few parasite species, but Colin J. Carlson, lead author of the study and a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, and his colleagues wanted to get a global view of the impact of climate change. Some kinds won't lose much in a warming world, the study found. For instance, thorny-headed worms are likely to be protected because their hosts, fish and birds, are common and widespread. But other types, such as fleas and tapeworms, may not be able to tolerate much change in temperature; many others infect only hosts that are facing extinction, as well. In all, roughly 30 percent of parasitic species could disappear, Mr. Carlson concluded. The impact of climate change will be as great or greater for these species as for any others studied so far. The study has been published in Science Advances.
study of what climate change may do to the world's much-loathed parasites. The team came to a startling conclusion: as many as one in three parasite species may face extinction in the next century
So, once chance in three we get rid of the lawyers?
Could be worth it then.
I think people are worried that one of the parasites wiped out might be humans.
"Would you really miss any of them?"
Sure. Tapeworms make great pets - they go where you go, eat what you eat, they're quiet, not messy, etc. Much less work than other pets.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
You linked to the daily caller. You may as well just called up Scott Pruitt.
Since you clearly don't understand how models work (any model), let me clue you in: They are all wrong. Every single one of them. There is no such thing as a perfect model. Never has been, never will be. It doesn't matter if you're talking about a model for a bridge or a model for the climate. Every single model has error bars, caveats, assumptions, etc., which is why models are used for GUIDANCE and not PREDICTION. The predictions are made from models, additional data, additional analysis, etc. from EXPERTS IN THE FIELD. Models are TOOLS, not the end all be all of scientific analysis.
Now that we got that out of the way, the paper does not say anything about the models being completely wrong. The paper is examining several different aspects of potential sources that lead to temperatures increasing at a slightly slower rate than the models predicted over the past decade or so. The issues range from potential systemic biases in the data sets to various different aspects of internal variability that the models don't currently capture.
At no point do they claim that the models "are completely wrong". Nor are any current results invalidated. This is a paper discussing possible improvements to the models and/or data analysis to improve overall predictions.
You either didn't read the paper, or you need to really work on your reading comprehension.
~X~
Mosquitoes do not make up a substantial part of any creatures diet. Even bats do not depend on mosquitoes. Bats eat beetles, wasps, and moths. Mosquitoes make up less than 1 percent of their total diet.
Studies of areas where mosquitoes have been eliminated show no major ecological disruption. They are seasonal anyway. Mosquitoes (at least the ones that harm us) are a blight on the world and should be eliminated.