Heat Waves and Bird Deaths

9.2.2022 –Worldwide, heat waves are increasing in severity and frequency. University of New Mexico Professor Blair Wolf studies how birds cope with the heat, directly and through behavioral changes, and how declines in some bird communities are associated with increased warming. 

In conversation with Laura Paskus, he talks about his research, what we know about how high temperatures affect individual birds and bird populations, and what we can all do when heat waves hit.

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Correspondent: Laura Paskus

Guest: Blair Wolf, University of New Mexico, Department of Biology

For More Information:

“London hit 104 degrees. That’s like 115 degrees in Houston.” The Washington Post

“Exposure to climate change drives stability or collapse of desert mammal and bird communities” Science

“Keeping your cool: thermoregulatory performance and plasticity in desert cricetid rodents” Journal of Experimental Biology

“Avian mortality risk during heat waves will increase greatly in arid Australia during the 21st century” (Conservation Physiology)“Proximate and evolutionary sources of variation in offspring energy expenditure in songbirds”Global Ecology and Biogeography