大象传媒

Climate change is affecting everything on Earth - from humans to the natural world. Here's a new angle: soaring temperatures apparently equal soaring divorce rates - among albatross, those large sea birds known for being very loyal to their breeding partners.

That's the conclusion arrived at by a team of scientists led by Francesco Ventura, a researcher at the University of Lisbon and co-author of a new Royal Society study, which was carried out on the Falklands islands.

"Our main finding from the study is that for increased sea surface temperatures the divorce and probability of divorce... increases. The average divorce rate is 3%, even as low as 1%; whereas, as the sea surface temperature increases we can observe much higher divorces rates such as 8% in a particularly bad year."

"We know each breeding pair in out colony in out study and so when we notice that both members of the pair survive over Winter and started breeding with a new individual in the following breeding season, that's how we define divorce."

(Pic: Albatross couple; Credit: 大象传媒)

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