How Climate Change may Endanger Caribou Habitat

A recent study shows how climate change played a role in the evolution of reindeer native to Northern Europe, Asia and North America, otherwise known as caribou.

Researchers from the University of Calgary conducted a study based on DNA of reindeer in Scandinavia and Asia as well as tundra and woodland caribou in North America to find out how their environments were affected through the past and how they might be influenced by the future.

Background information from the study notes that caribou are likely to suffer from the effects of global warming greatly as it endangers their habitat.

"The woodland caribou is already an endangered species in southern Canada and the United States. The warming of the planet means the disappearance of their critical habitat in these regions. Caribou need undisturbed lichen-rich environments and these types of habitats are disappearing," said Marco Musiani, a professor in the faculties of Environmental Design and Veterinary Medicine and co-author of the study, via a press release. He also notes their findings projected how the environment will change by the year 2080.

Study results show that during the last glaciation, caribou living in North America just south of the continental ice became isolated due to the climate change. During that time, as Europe, Asia, and Aslaka were connected by a land bridge, those reindeer evolved separately.

"Then, at meltdown the two groups, reindeer from the North and caribou from the South, reunited and interbred in areas previously glaciated such as the southern Canadian Rockies," Musiani said, via the release.

The researchers looked at how the animals were distributed over 21,000 years as the climate changed and at present. The discovered that caribou native to Alaska and northern Canada were very similar to reindeer. 

"Animals more closely related to reindeer occur in North America, throughout its northern and western regions, with some transitional zones, such as the one remarkably placed in the southern Canadian Rockies," said Musiani.

More information regarding the study can be found via the journal Nature Climate Change.