Drop in daddy long legs (UK nickname for "crane fly") is devastating bird populations

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.ncl.ac.uk/press.office/press.release/item/drop-in-daddy-long-legs-is-devastating-bird-populations

Drop in daddy long legs is devastating bird populations

Warm summers are dramatically reducing populations of daddy long legs, which in turn is having a severe impact on the bird populations which rely on them for food.

New research by a team of bird experts, including Newcastle University’s Dr Mark Whittingham, spells out for the first time how climate change may affect upland bird species like the golden plover – perhaps pushing it towards local extinction by the end of the century.

It also points a way forward to how we can attempt to strengthen habitats to help wildlife adapt to our changing climate and prevent such consequences.

Previous research has shown how changes in the timing of the golden plover breeding season as a result of increasing spring temperatures might affect their ability to match the spring emergence of their cranefly (daddy long legs) prey.

The new research, published today in the scientific journal Global Change Biology, shows the true effects are much more severe.

Higher temperatures in late summer are killing the cranefly larvae, resulting in a drop of up to 95 per cent in the number of adult craneflies emerging the following spring. With these craneflies providing a crucial food source for a wide range of upland birds like the golden plover, this means starvation and death for many chicks.

“The population of Golden Plovers in our study will likely be extinct in around 100 years if temperature predictions are correct and the birds cannot adapt to feed on other prey sources,” explains Newcastle University’s Dr Mark Whittingham, who worked on the study with scientists from RSPB Scotland and Aberystwyth and Manchester universities.

“Our study models the impacts of climate change on the ecology of the animal. In this case we show that higher August temperatures, as predicted from climate change models, are correlated with lower numbers of daddy-long legs.

“Daddy long-leg abundance is key for Golden Plover chicks in terms of growth and survival. Worryingly, our work is likely to apply to other upland bird species that also rely on daddy-long legs as a prey resource, such as Curlew.”

Academic paper: Impacts of climate on prey abundance account for fluctuations in a population of a northern wader at the southern edge of its range is published in the scientific journal Global Change Biology and is available at http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/121684866/abstract

published on: 26th March 2009

[marmar]

1. This is too bad.....

..... Although I admit, those Daddy Long Legs thingies give me the creeps. :scared:

[OKIsItJustMe]

4. For some reason, I don't mind "Daddy Long Legs" as much as some "spiders"

(The typical "Daddy Long Legs" is actually not a "spider.")

[DCKit]

2. For anyone whose first instinct is to say "they'll just move farther north"...

there is no landmass under the Arctic ice. It's all ocean.

[mainegreen]

3. So which is it? Craneflies or daddy long legs?

Or do people elsewhere NOT call those long legged almost spiders daddy long legs?

[OKIsItJustMe]

5. Two cultures, separated by a common language

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crane_fly

Crane fly

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Insects in the family Tipulidae are commonly known as crane flies. Adults are very slender, long-legged flies that may vary in length from 2–60 mm (tropical species may exceed 100 mm).

In the United Kingdom, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and Ireland they are commonly referred to as daddy long-legs, but this name can also refer to two unrelated arthropods: members of the arachnid order Opiliones (especially in the United States and Canada) and the cellar spider Pholcidae (especially in Australia).

…

[Arkansas Granny]

6. Apparently it depends on where you live.

This is what we call daddy long legs:


The crane fly they are talking about are apparently also called daddy long legs:


It had me confused for a bit.

[14thColony]

7. No, over here in England

a daddy long-legs has wings and can fly. Confused the crap out of me at first too. In the South a daddy long legs is also a spider.

[applegrove]

8. Daddy Long Legs is a kind of spider in Canada.