Page 63 - BBC Wildlife Volume 36 #10

NEWS FEATURE

Drought: the winners andlosers

Certain British species and habitats are more likely than
others to be afected by 2018’s heatwave. Some may evenno
longer make a home here, but there could be new arrivals.

BAD

YEAR

Badger
Red fox (right)

Hedgehog
Mole
GOOD Large, small and

YEAR green-veined white butterflies

Speckled wood
Swallow (right)
Ringlet
Swift
Blackbird
House martin
Starling
Spotted flycatcher
Late-flowering orchids
Comma (above)
Wildflowers with shallow
Holly blue
roots on shallow, dry soils
Purple emperor
South-facing chalk grasslands
Black hairstreak in south-east England (below)

about ponds is that they should stay full all year. Marbled white Montane habitats
In fact, in the classic ponds that nature creates, Early purple
each will regularly have seasons where the water orchid (below,
pulls back, opening up this new environment. visited by
Most wetland animals are adapted to deal with an orange
Comma & scotch argus: Michel Gunther/Biosphoto/Alamy; swallow: Alan Williams/NPL; orchid: MYN/ Niall Benvie/NPL;
dry years or dry seasons. Some amphibian tip butterfly)
tadpoles, for instance, speed up their growth in
such years, metamorphosing at a smaller size to
get clear of the shrinking waters.”
bee eater: Ray Wilson/Alamy; fox: Wild Wonders of Europe/Geslin/NPL; grassland: Blackbeck/Getty
Problems can arise, though – and the picture
can grow more complex – when we factor
in variables other than drought alone. Us,
for example. Consider peat bog: it’s a pretty
tough habitat, when it’s allowed to be. Rob
Stoneman, the chief executive of the Yorkshire
Wildlife Trust, characterises sphagnum mosses, POTENTIAL NEW POTENTIAL LOSSES
the keystone species of healthy bogs, as the COLONISTS FROM THE UK
“ultimate ecosystem engineers”, adapted to wet European bee-eater (below) Mountain ringlet
conditions yet resilient to drought.
“A walk across a peatland landscape in the Glossy ibis Scotch argus (below)
blistering heat of summer 2018 would have Hoopoe Dotterel
left footprints in white crispy sphagnum moss, Black-winged stilt Snow bunting
dried and seemingly dead as the water-table Swallowtail butterfly Ptarmigan
fell away,” Stoneman says. “However, (Continental
sphagnum has evolved to cope with drought. subspecies gorganus) Specialist alpine
It loses water from the top of the moss-mat, flora
yet below, water within the peat is drawn Various dragonflies
upwards to keep the moss alive. Through this and damselflies
ecosystem engineering, sphagnum mosses

October 2018 BBC Wildlife 63