Climate change is making our environment ’bluer’

A study of the 'spectral colour' of animal populations and their habitats shows they are linked, and that both are becoming more blue. Scientists say this has an effect on extinction rates - news Thursday 7 April 2011 - Adapted from a news release by British Ecological Society The 'colour' of our environment is becoming 'bluer', a change that could have important implications for animals' risk of becoming extinct, say ecologists from Imperial College London this week. In a major study published this week in the British Ecological Society's Journal of Animal Ecology , researchers examined how quickly or slowly animal populations and their environment fluctuate over time, something ecologists describe using 'spectral colour'. Previous studies show that the spectral colour of a population is linked to its risk of becoming extinct; now this study shows a way that climate change could impact the extinction risk of populations by affecting the colour of populations. Ecologists have investigated the link between fluctuations in the environment and those of animal populations for the past 30 years. They describe fluctuations as a colour spectrum, where red signifies an environment or population that fluctuates more slowly over time (such as ocean temperature) and blue signifies more rapid fluctuations (such as changes in air temperature). Existing models and theories suggest that the spectral colour of the environment should affect the spectral colour of animal populations.