A new study has revealed that salamanders in the Appalachian Mountains seem to be shrinking in size due to climate change.
The amphibians appear to have diminished as much as 8 percent in size from the 1980s, BBC News reported. Their shrinking size correlates with hotter and drier weather, leading scientists to blame the area's warming climate for the change.
Publishing their findings in the online journal Global Change Biology, researchers examined museum specimens of the amphibians that were caught from 1957 to 2007 as well as some taken from the same parts of the Appalachian Mountains in 2011 and 2012, said a University of Maryland press release.
"This is one of the largest and fastest rates of change ever recorded in any animal," lead author Karen R. Lips, an associate professor of biology at the University of Maryland, said in a statement. "We don't know exactly how or why it's happening, but our data show it is clearly correlated with climate change."
The study built on the work of Emeritus Richard Highton, a University of Maryland professor who collected hundreds of thousands of the wild amphibians between 1957 and 2007 to be studied. His data showed that the salamander population has been declining in the area since the 1980s, according to BBC News.
Lips, an amphibian expert, wondered if the salamanders were affected by a fungal disease similar to one that caused frogs in Central America to decline. When testing the museum specimens or recently captured salamanders, she found barely any traces of fungal disease; however, Lips discovered that the amphibians were substantially shrinking in size.
With a computer program from biologist Michael W. Sears of Clemson University in South Carolina, the researchers detailed a salamander's daily activities, discovering that the hotter temperatures made them burn energy more quickly.
The salamanders may be able to adapt to a smaller size, but the change could spell trouble for the species.
"Bigger animals in general tend to get more mates, they have more offspring, they tend to win in any sort of battles--whether it's courtship or territorial behaviors," said Lips, as quoted by BBC News.
"When you shrink that affects what can eat you, what you can eat, how successful you're going to be at reproducing. Bigger is generally better."
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