Boratyński Zbyszek, Mousseau Timothy A, Møller Anders Pape
BIOPOLIS, CIBIO/InBio, Research Centre in Biodiversity and Genetic Resources, University of Porto, Campus de Vairão, Portugal.
Department of Biological Sciences, University of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2025 Aug 6;20(8):e0329769. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0329769. eCollection 2025.
Global warming and degradation of natural habitats are the two main factors causing ecophysiological stress on individuals and risk for biodiversity. Hyperthermia is a common response to stress in homeothermic animals, in particular to heat, pathogens and environmental contamination. Resilience of biological systems to global warming may be deteriorated in polluted habitats. Here we investigated how body temperature of a wild bird, the barn swallow (Hirundo rustica), responded to global warming while simultaneously exposed to radioactive contamination from the Chernobyl accident. Our results showed that both high air temperatures (t = 15.55, df = 335, p < 0.0001) and elevated environmental radioactive contamination (t = 5.18, df = 8.09, p = 0.0008) increased internal body temperature of individuals. The additive effect suggests that birds might suffer hyperthermia in locally contaminated habitat (1.47% body temperature increase) while simultaneously exposed to globally rising temperatures (1.95% body temperature increase), potentially reducing the fitness of individual and the maintenance of breeding colonies. The cumulative and interactive negative effects of multiple stressors, such as those emerging from increasing habitat degradation and climate change, will likely contribute to biodiversity losses globally.
全球变暖和自然栖息地退化是对个体造成生态生理压力以及给生物多样性带来风险的两个主要因素。体温过高是恒温动物应对压力的常见反应，尤其是对高温、病原体和环境污染的反应。在受污染的栖息地中，生物系统对全球变暖的恢复力可能会下降。在此，我们研究了一种野生鸟类家燕（Hirundo rustica）的体温在面临全球变暖的同时，又受到切尔诺贝利事故放射性污染影响时的反应。我们的结果表明，高温（t = 15.55，自由度 = 335，p < 0.0001）和环境放射性污染增加（t = 5.18，自由度 = 8.09，p = 0.0008）都会使个体的体内温度升高。这种累加效应表明，鸟类在局部受污染的栖息地（体温升高1.47%）同时又面临全球气温上升（体温升高1.95%）时，可能会遭受体温过高的情况，这可能会降低个体的适应性以及繁殖群体的维持。多种压力源（如栖息地退化加剧和气候变化产生的压力源）累积和交互产生的负面影响，可能会导致全球生物多样性丧失。
