Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/11/12/breeding-by-great-tits-under-threat-from-climate-change.html
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Well here’s a post that should evoke some clever responses. Go
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“Save the tits” could attact people not usually interested in climate change.
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Not the article I was expecting.
Yet again, the great tits get all the attention and the ordinary or so-so tits are neglected. Check your privilege, great tits.
#alltitsmatter
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The obvious joke is that it’s the only way to get Donald Trump interested in climate change.
But I suspect that his response would actually be:
“But why should I care? I have great tits. The best tits. Well, not me personally, but Melania. They cost me a lot of money. She lets me look at them sometimes - but only if I promise not to touch. I always touch though. Always touch. That’s why I wear the tan - to hide the slap marks on my face. Sorry, what were we talking about? Oh yeah, great tits…”
(I am very obviously treading a fine line on what is and is not appropriate content for the board, and I appreciate your indulgence.)
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That is a ridiculous way to carry cantaloupes. She should put them in her backpack instead.
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So we’re going to go down the Beavis and Butthead road?
That was a funny show back when I enjoyed that kind of humor. I heard they’re rebooting it.
On a more depressing note, this is the same sort of research being done on pollinator population crash, with the same sort of conclusion. 
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The headline and graphic sort of pushed this narrative, no? Clickbait is clickbait no matter what the content.
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So you’re saying Great Tits need significant support or their numbers will start drooping.
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We apply structured population models to a well‐characterised great tit‐caterpillar model system and identify thresholds of temporal asynchrony, beyond which the predator population will rapidly go extinct. Our model suggests that phenotypic plasticity in predator breeding timing initially maintains temporal synchrony in the face of environmental change. However, under projections of climate change, predator plasticity was insufficient to keep pace with prey phenology. Directional evolution then accelerated, but could not prevent mismatch. Once predator phenology lagged behind prey by more than 24 days, rapid extinction was inevitable, despite previously stable population dynamics. Our projections suggest that current population stability could be masking a route to population collapse, if high greenhouse gas emissions continue.
We built a model to test whether a shortage of caterpillars, relative to the great tit population, at key times, would have a detrimental effect on the ability of great tits to survive. It does. Once the timing of the caterpillar emergence gets out of synch with when great tits expect to prey on them, the birds rapidly go extinct as they are unable to evolve to different prey quickly enough.
Better?
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One of my favorite headlines ever:
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Did anyone say Boobies???
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What was this article about? I never got past Great Tits …
We have a National Audubon Society bird-a-day calendar, and it appears to offer an asymmetrical amount of tits, great tits, and boobies scattered through it. Today, in fact, features a great tit.
After the day ends, I hide those pages around the house. Who doesn’t want to randomly discover great tits and boobies?!
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