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| Titel |
Influence of Climate Warming on Arctic Mammals? New Insights from Ancient DNA Studies of the collared lemming Dicrostonyx torquatus. |
| VerfasserIn |
Stefan Prost, Nickolay Smirnov, Vadim B. Fedorov, Robert S. Sommer, Mathias Stiller, Doris Nagel  , Michael Knapp, Michael Hofreiter |
| Konferenz |
EGU General Assembly 2010
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| Medientyp |
Artikel
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| Sprache |
Englisch
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| Digitales Dokument |
PDF |
| Erschienen |
In: GRA - Volume 12 (2010) |
| Datensatznummer |
250033086
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| Zusammenfassung |
| Global temperature increased by approximately half a degree (Celsius) within the last 150
years. Even this moderate warming had major impacts on Earth’s ecological and biological
systems, especially in the Arctic where the magnitude of abiotic changes even exceeds
those in temperate and tropical biomes. Therefore, understanding the biological
consequences of climate change on high latitudes is of critical importance for future
conservation of the species living in this habitat. The past 25,000 years can be used as a
model for such changes, as they were marked by prominent climatic changes that
influenced geographic distribution, demographic history and pattern of genetic variation
of many extant species. We sequenced ancient and modern DNA of the collared
lemming (Dicrostonyx torquatus), which is a key species of the arctic biota, from a
single site (Pymva Shor, Northern Pre Urals, Russia) to see if climate warming
events after the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) had detectable effects on the genetic
variation of this arctic rodent species, which is strongly associated with cold and dry
climate.
Using three dimensional network reconstruction and model-based approaches such as
Approximate Bayesian Computation and Markov Chain Monte Carlo based Bayesian
inference we show that there is evidence for a population decline in the collared
lemming following the LGM, with the population size dropping to a minimum
during the Greenland Interstadial 1 (Blling/Allerd) warming phase at 14.5 kyrs
BP.
Our results show that previous climate warming events had a strong influence on collard
lemming populations. A similar population reduction due to predicted future climate
change would have severe effects on the arctic ecosystem, as collared lemmings are
a key species in the trophic interactions and ecosystem processes in the Arctic. |
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