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Climate Change - effects on animals

Climate change is doing "widespread and consequential" harm to animals
and plants, which are struggling to adapt to new conditions.
They're also being forced to change their behaviors. For instance, many birds are
nesting, breeding, and migrating earlier as spring arrives sooner than before.
Current research suggests that winners in this transformation will be adaptable
species that are expanding their ranges, including many weeds and pests, and
also cold-sensitive, invasive species like the Burmese python in Florida.
The losers will likely be the species that are highly specialized in what they eat or
where they live, especially those whose habitats disappear completely.
That might include species such as koalas, which depend mainly on eucalyptus
for survival, and the many animal and plant species that live only on isolated
mountaintops.
Orange-spotted filefish. The filefish dwells in coral reef habitats, on
which it is totally dependent, and which themselves are declining in part due
to climate change. In addition, the orange-spotted filefish is highly sensitive to
warm water: the animal went extinct in Japan during an episode of warmer
ocean temperatures in 1988.
Polar bear. The large predator's story is well known: The Arctic sea ice
on which the animals hunt is progressively disappearing during the summer.
Sea ice is forming later in the fall and disappearing earlier in the spring. "As
the Arctic sea ice retreats, polar bears have to exploit alternative food
sources, such as on land," the scientists said, and some hungry polar bears
have turned to goose eggs. Some media reports have suggested that this
might mean polar bears could just come ashore and eat terrestrial foods and
somehow do fine without the sea ice, but we have absolutely no evidence
that they have the ability to do this.
Adlie penguin. These Antarctic birds mostly live on tiny crustaceans
called krill. Krill live on the undersides of ice sheets, where they find refuge
and algae as food. But as Antarctic sea ice retreats, krill populations are
fallingmeaning that the penguins have to migrate farther to find food.
Spending a lot more energy to find food makes penguins less successful at
breeding and raising young, the scientists said.
North Atlantic cod. Overfishing has historically caused numbers of this
fish to plunge, but its populations usually bounce back. Not so off the
northeastern coast of North America, where populations have not recovered
since crashing in the 1990s. "The entire ecosystem seems to have changed,"
the scientists said, and "this may involve a climate influence due to changing
ocean currents and the influx of cold Arctic waters."
Coral worldwide. This reef-building animal is in decline almost
everywhere, for a combination of reasons, including warming waterscoral
are sensitive to changes in ocean temperature.
EXTINCT: Golden toad. Along with the Monteverde harlequin frog, also
of Central America, the golden toad is among the very small number of
species whose recent extinction has been attributed with medium confidence
to climate change. Last seen in 1989, the golden frog lived in mountaintop
cloud forests that have disappeared due to drought and other climatic
changes. Other confounding factors are involved, such as the deadly chytrid
fungus, which has killed off many amphibians worldwide.