Birds are the "canaries in the climate-change coal mine"

A bird study led by The Australian National University (ANU) provides new understanding of the ways birds and mammals respond to a rapidly warming world. The researchers say the findings offer insights into the pressures wild populations must manage in order to survive. The future survival of animal populations will depend on how they are able to respond to climate change. As well as changing location or advancing the timing of breeding to track the warming seasons, some animals have been showing shifts in average body size. Despite theoretical predictions that body size will decline as temperatures rise, some species have increased in size. To date, no study has been able to account for the variation in size trends. A team led by Dr Janet Gardner measured thousands of museum specimens of 82 Australian bird species to look for body-size changes over the last 50 years.