Warning that climate change will strongly affect parasites

2017/09/07 Galarraga Aiestaran, Ana - Elhuyar Zientzia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Ekologia
• Klima
• Ingurumena

Despite the poor prestige of parasites, their diversity is related to the health of ecosystems. However, the consequences of climate change on living beings have been ruled out. However, they have now focused on them and warn of the danger of losing a third of the parasites by 2070.

The research has been conducted at the Wayne Getzen Laboratory of the University of California and the results have been published in the journal Science Advances. According to them, the historical collections of parasites in museums (more than 200 million parasites) and the data collected today have been used for the preparation of the forecasts, and how 457 species of parasites would affect climate change. The worst forecasts point to the risk of losing a third, compared to 10% of the most optimistic.

In any case, they point out that the loss would have a great impact on ecosystems. Therefore, when analyzing the consequences of climate change, rather than focusing on certain species, it has been proposed to consider ecosystems as a whole, in the conviction that they will better predict the real situation.