New research delves into the potential repercussions of global warming on ecosystems, and how it could derail the development of new species.
Across the globe, new species constantly emerge as separate groups of organisms branch off and evolve in divergent paths. But what occurs when climate change becomes a variable in this complex equation?
That’s the question Thomas H.Q. Powell, assistant professor of biological sciences at Binghamton University, State University of New York, and his lab seek to answer in a recent paper published in Ecology Letters.
In the 1850s, the apple maggot fly — a major agricultural pest — began to diverge into two populations in the Hudson Valley. One continued to live on the fruit of the region’s native hawthorn trees. The other shifted to a new food source: apple trees, originally introduced to North America by English colonists.