Diversity helped Mammals to Survive During Climate Change

A study published in the journal Public Library of Science One on 23 April 2012, described that the diversity is the mammal's best defense when it comes to adapting climatic changes.
In one of the conclusions of the first study of how mammals in North America adapted to climate change the researchers found that diversity helped them to sustain in the changing climate.
The role of diversity in mammalian adaptation is specifically important given the fact that mammal species have been going extinct in record numbers for the past 400 years. In a 2008 report, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature predicted that one in four species of land mammals in the world faces extinction. As a result, the diversity of mammalian families is declining at a time when they need it the most to cope with a rapidly changing climate.
Larisa R. G. DeSantis, the assistant professor of earth and environmental studies at Vanderbilt directed the study, while it was co-authored by Rachel A. Beavins Tracy, Cassandra S. Koontz, John C. Roseberry and Matthew C. Velasco. The project was supported by funds from Vanderbilt University.