Word: thackerays
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...answer, evident in a paper just published in the journal Global Change Biology, is that it isn't easy - but it's possible nevertheless. A team of scientists led by Stephen Thackeray, an expert on lake ecology at the United Kingdom's Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, has combed through observations of more than 700 species of fish, birds, mammals, insects, amphibians, plankton and a wide variety of plants across the U.K. taken between 1976 and 2005, and found a consistent trend: more than 80% of "biological events" - including flowering of plants, ovulation among mammals and migration of birds...
...average, these events are occurring about 11 days earlier, and the pace of change has been accelerating with every decade. "The pattern is very similar," says Thackeray, "whether you look at marine or freshwater or terrestrial organisms...
...differences in the pattern emerged when scientists looked at species at different levels of the food chain. As part of the analysis, says Thackeray, "we grouped these trends according to organisms' positions." What they found was that the changes in biological events were greater toward the bottom of the food chain than they were at the top. (See the top 10 invasive species...
...Thackeray is too careful a scientist to speculate about whether that sort of disconnect lies in the future for U.K. species. "I want to be very careful to talk only about what we've formally tested. My feeling is that the impact will vary, but I can't say more," he says. He's even too cautious to state that these changes are necessarily evidence of global warming. "The patterns are coherent across different habitats," he says, "which would suggest a large-scale phenomenon. It would be tempting to conclude that this might be a change in climate...
...General R.K. Hooda, an army officer who was the commander for today's military operations, hinted that their accents might have been Pakistani.) So far, there have been little more than hints and platitudes from the steady stream of high-profile visitors to south Mumbai: the local strongman Raj Thackeray, Maharashtra state chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh, Member of Parliament Milind Deora. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress President Sonia Gandhi are said to be on their way to the city, as is opposition BJP leader L.K. Advani. The question is, Will they do anything to better prepare this city...