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Fly on the wall of climate change

23 September 2009

Monash researchers have discovered that some tropical climate fauna may be unable to adapt to climate change and are therefore at an increased risk of extinction.

The research was conducted by a team from the Monash Centre for Environmental Stress and Adaptation Research (CESAR) and the University of Melbourne and was published this month in the prestigious journal Science.

They used vinegar flies (Drosophila) as a model, comparing species that lived in tropical habitats with those inhabiting more widely-distributed environments.

Their research revealed that the flies restricted to tropical environments have a narrower set of genes for traits such as tolerance to drying (desiccation) and cold, in effect preventing adaptation.

CESAR's Dr Carla Sgrò said the findings suggested specialist species have a fundamental evolutionary limit, and may be unable to adapt to future climate change.

"The more varied a species' genetic make up is, the better its ability to respond to change," she said.

"It has previously been thought that all species contain enough variation in their genes to enable adaptation to changing environmental conditions; however this may not actually be true for specialist species.

"In effect, we now have a genetic explanation for why species are restricted – they just don't have the genes needed to adapt to different environments.

"Our concern is that the inability to adapt will affect many species, including groups of insects and potentially other groups such as mammals and fish."

Dr Sgrò said the team's current work may assist in conservation efforts by identifying species vulnerable to future climate change.

"This work is important because understanding the link between genetic diversity and species distributions will provide a way of assessing and predicting the ability of species to adapt to climate change," she said.

Dr Sgrò is an ARC Australian Research Fellow with Monash University's School of Biological Sciences.