Climate Change Has Turned The Kansas Prairie Into Junk Food That's Killing Grasshoppers netnebraska.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from netnebraska.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Climate change turns Kansas prairie into grasshopper-killing junk food cjonline.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from cjonline.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Brian Grimmett, Kansas News Service
Manhattan Ellen Welti has a Ph.D. in, essentially, grasshoppers.
And yet she was still mystified about why the number of grasshoppers in a long-protected and much-studied patch of Kansas prairie was dropping. Steadily. For 25 years.
After all, the grass that the springy bugs feast on had actually grown more robustly as it absorbed mounting levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
So why were the grasshoppers faring increasingly worse?
“We thought that this is a pretty nice habitat for grasshoppers,” she said.
The insects dwell on the Konza Long-Term Ecological Research site. Their home sat in preserve, shielded from development, from farming, from just about everything people do to the planet.
A close-up picture of a grasshopper nymph.
More carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is changing how wild grasses grow in Kansas, and lowering their nutritional value to insects. That could upset the balance of life on the prairie.
MANHATTAN, Kansas Ellen Welti has a Ph.D. in, essentially, grasshoppers.
And yet she was still mystified about why the number of grasshoppers in a long-protected and much-studied patch of Kansas prairie was dropping. Steadily. For 25 years.
After all, the grass that the springy bugs feast on had actually grown more robustly as it absorbed mounting levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Climate Change Has Turned The Kansas Prairie Into Junk Food That's Killing Grasshoppers kmuw.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from kmuw.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.