How will climate change affect different species? Will organisms be able to adapt quickly enough to survive in a rapidly changing environment?

Researchers at the University of Oxford are attempting to predict this with small, short-lived birds like the great tit (Parus major). In a study published this week in PLoS Biology, the scientists discovered that great tits living in a forest near Oxford have been able to survive and adapt to a 1°C temperature increase over the past 50 years.

After analyzing those 50-plus years of data collected on the birds in their habitats, the authors studied when the birds lay their eggs relative to spring temperatures, as well as how the birds have tracked the shifts in peak caterpillar numbers caused by the changes in temperature. They found that the birds are now laying their eggs an average of two weeks earlier than they did 50 years ago, primarily as a result of phenotypic plasticity.

Phenotypic plasticity enables organisms to adjust their behavior rapidly in response to short-term changes in the environment. Jack Dumbacher, curator and department chair of Ornithology & Mammalogy here at the Academy, explains, “It’s heritable but it’s not an evolutionary, or genotypic change. There’s no change in the genes.”

The authors’ predictions show that phenotypic plasticity could allow the great tits—and similar birds—to survive warming of 0.5°C per year, easily outpacing the current worst-case scenario of 0.03°C from climate models.

Dumbacher says that while this study is interesting and a good reminder how adaptable one species may be, he emphasizes that temperature increase is just one effect of climate change. Temperature variance and extreme weather are other effects with unknown results to various ecosystems, he says. In addition, Dumbacher reminds us that the great tits and caterpillars play roles in a much larger ecosystem, where the web of relationships is so interdependent that one small change to one small organism in that web could easily affect other species.

One effect of climate change that Dumbacher stresses (and the study does not mention) is invasive species. As temperatures change, habitat ranges change for different species, which can result in one species invading the habitat of another. One example Dumbacher gives is the Northern Spotted Owl (Strix occidentalis caurina). These birds have been able to adapt to a 1°C temperature increase over the past 100 years but are now facing a fierce competitor in the Barred Owl (Strix varia), an eastern species that now finds itself in the same territory as the Northern Spotted Owl.

“Climate change is more than a one degree temperature increase,” Jack says. “And while a species may demonstrate plasticity within different temperature regimes, it’s likely that ecosystems are not as adaptable. This why climatologists have such a difficult time predicting the effect of climate change on organisms.”

Image: Luc Viatour/Wikipedia

The surface temperature of the Sun is about 6,000 Kelvins, while the outer edge of the Sun’s atmosphere, called the corona, can reach millions of Kelvins. Normally, we think of things cooling down the farther they get from an energy source… So how can temperature increase with distance from the Sun’s surface?

The Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) spacecraft launches from the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on June 27th, with the intention of studying how the corona gets so hot.

“I wonder if maybe we were staring too hard at the corona to understand the corona,” says IRIS scientist Charles Kankelborg, a physicist at Montana State University. “It may be that by backing out we can get some vital clues to what’s happening.”

Between the Sun’s surface and the corona lies a layer of plasma called the chromosphere. Scientists hope that studying this area of lower atmosphere will help them uncover the reason behind the Sun’s strange temperature patterns.

From Earth, we can only observe the layer in question during a total solar eclipse, when the Moon blocks the Sun, and observers can see the halo of glowing light behind the Moon. For IRIS to see this section of sun, it will take images at temperatures between 4,500 Kelvins and 65,000 Kelvins, and ultraviolet spectra between 4,5000 Kelvin and 107 Kelvin.

IRIS is specially designed to target this little understood region of the Sun’s atmosphere. The spacecraft will follow a polar orbit—always facing the Sun—to trace the flow of energy and plasma from the lower layer of the Sun’s surface through the chromosphere and into the corona. Detailed information on this process could give astronomers an archetype for other stellar atmospheres.

Dr. Alan Title, IRIS principal investigator and physicist at the ATC Solar and Astrophysics Laboratory in Palo Alto, is excited for the launch. “With IRIS, we have a unique opportunity to provide significant missing pieces in our understanding of energy transport on the Sun. The complex processes and enormous contrasts of density, temperature and magnetic field within this interface region require instrument and modeling capabilities that are now finally within our reach.”

The launch takes place on Thursday, so the newest data about our closest star are coming soon!

You can watch the launch here at 6:00pm PDT!

Alyssa Keimach is an astronomy and astrophysics student at the University of Michigan and interns for the Morrison Planetarium.

Image: NASA