Limon Miah- Chapter 8 Journal

In chapter 8 of the book, Kolbert visits Peru where she meets with Miles Silman, a forest ecologist who focuses on the threats of global warming on the tropical ecosystems and species. Kolbert then goes onto describe why tropical areas have a lot of biodiversities. A couple theories that she states are that in tropical climates, animals are able to reproduce faster which increases the number of genetic mutations thus allowing for more diverse species, and that tropical ecosystems are some of the oldest environments and therefore have accumulated different species over time. Silman and Kolbert later go into a forest and observe the different types of tree species in the varying tropical environments. Silman than states that after conducting his research with the tree’s, he discovered that species have been increasingly going up to higher altitudes in the trees, approximately 8 feet per year, due to the rising temperatures in the forests. Kolbert also states that due to how fast the world's temperature is increasing, species will begin to migrate north in order to find an environment that their bodies are used to, however the threat lays with which species will be able to migrate fast in order to ensure their survival, while inevitable leaving others to die.

An APES theme that this chapter connects to is that Earth is one interconnected system and that its natural systems change over time. For example, in the chapter, it states “For plants to tolerate warmer temperatures there are all sorts of things that they could do… they could manufacture special proteins, They could change their metabolism, things like that… but thermal tolerance can be costly… So the question is, have plants and animals retained over this huge amount of time… have they retained these potentially costly characteristics…. What if they’ve lost these characteristics because for so many millions of years they provided no advantage” (pg. 172). Silman is stating that species will be able to change over time in order to aid themselves in adapting to a new and changing environment. This is simply a use of Darwin's theory of evolution, species will develop new characteristics in order to survive, or if they aren't able to they will, unfortunately, die out. One concern of Sillman though is that plants and animals species already have a set of characteristics that are costly for them in their current environments, but due to the changing global temperatures, those costly characteristics would prove to be beneficial for a species survival. However, due to a species not using those characteristics for a long period of time, it is possible that evolution took over and a species has already lost those characteristics because they weren't being put to use. If this is the situation then millions of species will be faced with an “apocalyptic” extinction. Lastly, (Q)  one question I have about Sillman's statement is that he states that species already have certain costly characteristics that they could use, however, isn't there a possibility that those characteristics may be of no use or can even limit their adaptation to the new global environment, thus wiping out any chances of survival for the species anyways?