Will polar bears survive in a warmer world? UCLA life scientists present new evidence that their numbers are likely to dwindle.
As polar bears lose habitat due to global warming, these biologists say, they will be forced southward in search of alternative sources of food, where they will increasingly come into competition with grizzly bears.
To test how this competition might unfold, the UCLA biologists constructed three-dimensional computer models of the skulls of polar bears and grizzly bears a subspecies of brown bears and simulated the process of biting. The models enabled them to compare the two species in terms of how hard they can bite and how strong their skulls are.
"What we found was striking," said Graham Slater, a National Science Foundationfunded UCLA postdoctoral scholar in ecology and evolutionary biology and lead author of the research. "The polar bear and brown bear can bite equally hard, but the polar bear's skull is a much weaker structure."
The implication is that polar bears are likely to lose out in competition for food to grizzlies as warmer temperatures bring them into the same environments, because grizzlies' stronger skulls are better suited to a plant-rich diet, said Slater and Blaire Van Valkenburgh, UCLA professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and senior author of the research.
"The result for polar bears may be lower weight, smaller and fewer litters, less reproductive success, fewer that would survive to adulthood, and dwindling populations," Van Valkenburgh said. "Then you can get into an extinction vortex, where a small population becomes even smaller in a downward spiral to extinction.
"To people who say polar bears can just change their diet, we are saying they will change their diet they will have to but it probably will not be sufficient for them, especially if they are co-existing with grizzly bears. Their skull is relatively weak and not suited to
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| Contact: Stuart Wolpert swolpert@support.ucla.edu 310-206-0511 University of California - Los Angeles Source:Eurekalert |
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