How can birds that weigh less than a AA battery survive the immense power of Atlantic hurricanes?
How can birds that weigh less than a AA battery survive the immense power of Atlantic hurricanes? A new study in Ecology Letters finds that coastal birds populations can absorb impacts and recover quickly from hurricanes—even storms many times larger than anything previously observed.
Researchers developed computational simulations that allowed them to explore how disturbances like hurricanes would affect the populations of four coastal species over time. All of the species were able to absorb the impacts of storms across a wide range in severity.
“Coastal birds are often held up as symbols of vulnerability to hurricanes and oil spills, but many populations can be quite resilient to big disturbances,” says Christopher Field, UConn alum and now a postdoctoral fellow at the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center, who led the work with Chris Elphick, UConn professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, and colleagues from five other universities.
“The impacts of hurricanes, in terms of populations rather than individual birds, tend to be surprisingly small compared to the other threats that are causing these species to decline,” he adds.
Read more at University of Connecticut
