Popular Science: We have no clue how climate change will affect most land mammals. We’ve only studied the effects of climate change for around one percent of all mammals. At this point, you might think we understand how climate change will impact the planet pretty thoroughly. But one group of researchers just revealed a rather startling gap in our knowledge: how the warming planet affects land mammals.
The study, published this week in the Journal of Animal Ecology, involved an international team of researchers who conducted a literature review of all studies that examined links between climate change and how well a mammal could survive and eventually reproduce. Survival and reproduction are two of the key demographic rates that ecologists look at to see how a species’ population could grow and adapt over time.