New groundbreaking UCLA study: "Global warming will be increasing the amount of time and speed with which organisms move around"

Global warming will increase "interactions" that lead to a "feeding event".

(image by antiqueprings.com)

US taxpayers must be delighted to find out that they have financed another global warming study by UCLA "life scientists". This groundbreaking research was federally funded by the National Science Foundation (grant DEB 1021010):

In the current research, Savage and his colleagues examined how organisms' different physiological responses to rising temperatures could impact what are known as consumer–resource interactions. These are interactions between two organisms that lead to a "feeding" event – a prime example being a predator (consumer) and its prey (resource).--

Their model accounts for the fact that a change in temperature is likely to result in some predators becoming better at capturing prey while some prey animals become more efficient at evading capture, leading to imbalances in the food chain and potential repercussions for ecosystems.

A key biological trait driving different responses to temperature change among consumers and resources is body velocity – the speed at which an animal moves. Cold-blooded animals, for example, tend to move faster as their body temperature increases. The biologists predict that one of the primary impacts of global warming will be increasing the amount of time and speed with which organisms move around a landscape and thus encounter and interact with one another.

Global warming surely must be something these "consumers" can look forward to: More speed, more encounters, more social interaction and probably even more "feeding events". What more could they wish?