Climate change could have caused Alpine Chamois goats to shrink over the past three decades.
New research suggests these goats now weight about 25 percent less than animals of the same age did in the 1980s, Durham University reported. A decrease in body size in other species has been linked to climate change in the past, and now this goat may be added to the list.
"Body size declines attributed to climate change are widespread in the animal kingdom, with many fish, bird and mammal species getting smaller," said lead author Dr Tom Mason, in the School of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, at Durham University. "However the decreases we observe here are astonishing. The impacts on Chamois weight could pose real problems for the survival of these populations."
To make their findings the researchers looked at long-term records of Chamois body weight provided by hunters in the Italian Alps. They found the decrease in body size was correlated with a warming temperature in the region, which went up between 3 and 4 degrees Celsius over the past 30 years.
Past studies have concluded animals get smaller in instances of climate change because the availability of adequate nutrition is reduces.The recent study did not find evidence that the Alpine meadows grazed by Chamois were lacking in nutrition or had been affected by the warming temperatures, but the researchers believed the atmospheric changes are influencing how the goats behave.
"We know that Chamois cope with hot periods by resting more and spending less time searching for food, and this may be restricting their size more than the quality of the vegetation they eat," said co-author Stephen Willis, in the School of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, at Durham University. "If climate change results in similar [behavioral] and body mass changes in domestic livestock, this could have impacts on agricultural productivity in coming decades."
The change in body size could be problematic because the juvenile goats rely on their body mass to survive bitterly cold winters.
"This study shows the striking, unforeseen impacts that climate change can have on animal population," Mason said. "It is vital that we continue to study how climate change affects species such as Chamois. Changes in body size could act as early-warning systems for worse impacts to come, such as the collapses of populations."
The study was funded by the Environmental Research Council and was published in a recent edition fo the journal Frontiers in Zoology.
