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Warmer Planet Could Be Dominated by Mosquitoes,...

Warmer Planet Could Be Dominated by Mosquitoes, Tics, Rodents and J...

The distribution of wildlife on Earth is changing with the climate, making conditions more favorable to odd species such as trumpeter swans, beetles, marmots, albatross, killer whales and white-tailed deer.

Another creature that is likely to flourish in warmer waters is the Schistocephalus solidus tapeworm. The parasite spends most of its life growing inside the three-spined stickleback fish, which is about the size of a small sardine and lives in oceans and lakes throughout the Northern Hemisphere.

Certain species of insects, like mosquitoes, ticks and invasive beetles, are also expected to benefit from warmer temperatures. In fact, a 2003 study published by the Ecological Society of America concluded that "all aspects of insect outbreak behavior will intensify as the climate warms."

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Permalink Reply by Ruth Anthony-Gardner on February 23, 2012 at 6:06pm

Mosquito-borne diseases are scary. I stopped using my back yard after the mosquitoes carrying West Nile kept going after me.

Permalink Reply by Ruth Anthony-Gardner on February 23, 2012 at 7:21pm

It looks as if mammals will get smaller as the world warms too, which could reduce our food from domestic livestock.

Earliest Horses Show Past Global Warming Affected Body Size of Mammals

Philip Gingerich, who first recorded the phenomenon of decreasing body size during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum in 1989, said the study documentation clearly demonstrates the relationship between temperature and body size. He agrees this may occur as a result of current warming patterns.

"I joke about this all the time -- we're going to be walking around 3 feet tall if we keep going the way we're going," said Gingerich,...

Permalink Reply by Sentient Biped on February 23, 2012 at 8:21pm

This is good. Then the earth can hold twice as many people. Actually, Kurt Vonnegut explored human miniaturization in his novel "Slapstick". In that novel, Vonnegut also discussed how to end loneliness - the govt assigns every a middle name, consisting of a random natural object, plus a random number between 1 and 20. You might have a middle name of, say, Tulip-18. Then everyone who shares the middle name "Tulip-18" would be a sibling, and everyone who shares the middle name "Tulip" would be a cousin. I prefer that everyone choose their object, but the gov't assigns a number. I choose "Monkey-Puzzle", or if we have to be precise about it, Araucaria-araucana. I like that name. Or maybe Marmot. That would be a good middle name.