Science：鸟类为适应全球变暖改变繁殖时间
专题：Science报道
据5月9日science杂志报道，有些鸟儿为了适应不断变暖的气候， 多年来一直在改变其繁殖的时间。
英美科学家联合对山雀进行了历时47年之久的研究。通过将个体变异、群体水平反应、自然选择、气候以及物种的食物供给时间选择等资讯联系在一起，研究人员解释了这些山雀是如何有效地进行适应性变化以预先做好对它们环境变化的准备，旨在维持其种群数量并使繁殖达到最大化。（生物谷www.bioon.com）
生物谷推荐原始出处：
Science，Vol. 320. no. 5877, pp. 800 - 803，Anne Charmantier, Ben C. Sheldon
Adaptive Phenotypic Plasticity in Response to Climate Change in a Wild Bird Population
Rapid climate change has been implicated as a cause of evolution in poorly adapted populations. However, phenotypic plasticity provides the potential for organisms to respond rapidly and effectively to environmental change. Using a 47-year population study of the great tit (Parus major) in the United Kingdom, we show that individual adjustment of behavior in response to the environment has enabled the population to track a rapidly changing environment very closely. Individuals were markedly invariant in their response to environmental variation, suggesting that the current response may be fixed in this population. Phenotypic plasticity can thus play a central role in tracking environmental change; understanding the limits of plasticity is an important goal for future research.
1 Edward Grey Institute, Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3PS, UK.
2 Centre d'Ecologie Fonctionelle et Evolutive, Unité Mixte de Recherche CNRS 5175, 1919 Route de Mende, 34293 Montpellier Cedex 5, France.
3 Institute of Evolutionary Biology, School of Biological Sciences, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH9 3JT, UK.
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