The silver rice rat, an endangered species endemic to the Florida Keys, makes its home as close to the shoreline as possible for easy access to its low-tide marine species diet.
The silver rice rat, an endangered species endemic to the Florida Keys, makes its home as close to the shoreline as possible for easy access to its low-tide marine species diet.
It is this proximity to the water that prompted a team of scientists at the University of Florida to examine the rats’ movement in correlation with historical tidal data over 17 years. The sea level rose 0.142 meters between 2004 and 2021, and the researchers also found that the rats moved to higher ground. In fact, the rats shifted at a slightly greater rate than the observed rise in sea level.
The study, “Sea level rise adaptation pushes an insular endemic rodent closer to extinction” is now published in the journal Biodiversity and Conservation.
“We expected them to shift upslope, but it was surprising that the elevational range shift was so clear and more than we expected from the rise in sea level,” said Paul Taillie, the lead author, who completed the study as a postdoctoral researcher in the lab of Robert McCleery, UF/IFAS professor of wildlife ecology. “Part of this could be because sea level rise changes year to year.
