Posted on 07/04/2009 2:18:03 PM PDT by neverdem
Environmental change, including climate change, can cause rapid phenotypic change via both ecological and evolutionary processes. Because ecological and evolutionary dynamics are intimately linked, a major challenge is to identify their relative roles. We exactly decompose change in mean body weight in a free-living population of Soay sheep into all processes that contribute to change. Ecological processes contribute most, with selection—the underpinning of adaptive evolution—explaining little of the observed phenotypic trend. Our results enable us to explain why selection is not realized even though weight is heritable and why environmental change has caused a decline in Soay sheep body size.
I'm bigger than either of my parents. Diet couldn't have any thing to do with it, no way. It must be man caused global warming. This is utter crap for science!
75 years of in-breeding creating more and more runt offspring.
Sheep dip! Snake Oil !
Global Warming.....!!The answer to our Obesity problem!!
who knew??
And the smaller sheep who didn’t survive in the past are now surviving to adulthood. Isn’t that a good thing, that more survive because the winters aren’t as harsh????
If more sheep survive because of milder weather, then the total number of sheep-pounds and sheep-wool goes up.
I don’t see any problem here.
You nailed the real reason!
I think you should get Freepers Points for the correct answer.
I wonder if any of these jeenyuses had enough sense to do a study on what foods the sheep were eating, what were available 24 years ago and in what relative abundance versus today? I doubt if the sheep subsist on just grass. Even if they do, they are many varieties of grass. Some would be better food sources than others. I think what we are looking at here is another Kaibab waiting to happen.
“Sheep lie! Sheep lie!”
Is there poorer diet in these fields? (So only smaller survive, so sheep grow less in the same time frame?)
Is there more inbreeding?
Is there better diet - so fewer small sheep die?
Are there fewer predators, so smaller sheep can stay alive?
...
No answers to the above, and the above are not addresses in the article = It must be global warming!
A full 1/4 of one degree change in global temperatures in 30 years = GLOBAL CATASTROPHE! Small sheep!
Then there's no hope...soon they will be the size of rodents.
Someday Freeper Points will be worth more than US currency.
Wasn’t there research done in the past that basically shows creatures stuck on an island will grown smaller versions of themselves over time, whereas the mainland creatures will pretty much maintain normal sizing? Or am I mis-remembering?
Thanks for that. I should have read more of the responses. I was asking about insular dwarfism, but didn’t know what it was called. I just remember that I’d heard about the condition in the past.
It’s the wool. They leave them out in the rain. Everyone knows you can’t wash wool in warm water.
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