全球变暖使北极蚊子种群壮大

Warming temperatures are causing Arctic mosquitoes to grow faster and emerge earlier, significantly boosting their population and threatening the caribou ¹ they feast on, a Dartmouth College study finds. The study predicts the mosquitoes' probability of surviving and emerging as adults will increase by more than 50 percent if Arctic temperatures rise 2 °C. The findings are important because changes in the timing ² and intensity ³ of their emergence ⁴ affect their role as swarming ⁵ pests of people and wildlife, as pollinators of tundra ⁶ plants and as food for other species, including Arctic and migratory ⁷ birds., ,The researchers say the climate-population model they developed for Arctic mosquitoes and their predators ⁸ can be generalized to any ecosystem ⁹ where survival depends on sensitivities to changing temperatures., ,The study appears in the journal Proceedings ¹⁰ of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. A PDF is available on request., ,Climate change is raising temperatures globally, which greatly influences insect physiology ¹¹, growth rates and survival, including their ability to elude ¹² predators. Average temperatures in the Arctic have increased at twice the global rate in the past 100 years, and the low biodiversity of Arctic ecosystems ¹³ provided a simple predator-prey interaction for this study. Arctic mosquitoes develop in shallow temporary ponds of springtime snowmelt on the tundra, where their top predators are diving beetles ¹⁴., ,Using field and lab studies, the researchers measured the impacts of increasing temperatures on development and death rates from predation on immature ¹⁵ mosquitoes in western Greenland. They then developed a model to evaluate how temperature affects their survival from the immature stage to adult biting stage across a range of temperatures in future climate change scenarios ¹⁶ for the Arctic.