FRANCE: As the world warms, it is crucial to understand how animals will respond to and cope with rising temperatures. Some species might be relatively unaffected by climate change, while others may be seriously disrupted.
One vital aspect is how populations maintain their numbers over time through reproduction. It might seem obvious, but an important component of successful reproduction is having the correct ratio of males and females ready to breed within the population.
Animals have evolved a number of different strategies to achieve and maintain the the optimal ratio, although some of these are dependent on the temperature in the ambient environment.
In some species, for example, the gender that juveniles become is influenced by temperatures experienced during early development. This is known as “temperature sex determination”, and is seen in a broad range of animals including turtles, alligators, lizards and fish.
Yet there is concern that global warming poses a threat to entire populations of these animals because of the effect of warming on the gender ratio of juveniles, which has a knock-on effect on breeding adults in the population.
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