As the lakes that flamingos inhabit expand, the birds ’ food supplies are rapidly shrinking

Every year, millions of lesser flamingos ( Phoeniconaias minor ) flock to a few small soda lakes in East Africa, attracting as many tourists as do migrating wildebeest. But the bright pink birds’ numbers are falling sharply, a decline researchers have now linked to a paradoxical effect of climate change. Rainfall in the region is increasing, expanding the lakes, which might suggest the flamingos’ habitat is growing. But the extra water  dilutes the nutrients in the lakes, depleting the microbes on which the birds feed, researchers report today in Current Biology . So, even as the lakes expand, the flamingos’ feeding grounds and habitat are shrinking, the researchers find. “The long-term outlook is not very good,” says John Githaiga, an ecologist at the University of Nairobi who has studied the interplay of lake levels, water chemistry, and habitats, but was not involved with the new work. East Africa’s flamingos flock to soda lakes, bodies of water that accumulate high concentrations of nutrients because they have no outflows. In tropical places such as Kenya, sunshine throughout the year helps microscopic photosynthesizers thrive, and the water’s high salinity and pH favors the growth of spirulina, a cyanobacterium that is the lesser flamingo’s primary food. The birds move around a lot, following plankton blooms, and it’s challenging to tell flamingo species apart from a distance. So, estimates of the worldwide p...
Source: Science of Aging Knowledge Environment - Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research