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Thomas P Peschak

A leopard seal drifts next to an iceberg off the western coast of the Antarctic Peninsula. Air bubbles released from the melting ice stick to the lens of the underwater camera. For these seals, ice floes are a place to breed and molt, and they provide habitat for krill, an important prey. (From “An icy world is in meltdown, as penguin population shifts signal trouble,” October 2021.)

Emerging from their burrows after dark, ground pangolins will each eat about 15,000 ants and termites in a night—5.5 million in a year. Insect abundance depends on healthy grasses, the thread that binds life on the Kalahari’s nutrient-poor sands. Without summer rains, the greening will fail. The desert is a climate change hot spot: As temperature increases change rain patterns, animals like the pangolin face an uncertain future. (From “Rising heat puts the Kalahari’s ecosystem on the edge of survival.” July 2021.)

For meerkats—a kind of mongoose—in southern Africa’s Kalahari Desert, survival is a group effort. Sentries scan for danger, and lower-ranked adults, mostly females, feed and mind the senior female’s pups. It’s not clear how climate change will affect meerkats in the Kalahari, but hotter, drier summers may reduce their numbers. (From “Rising heat puts the Kalahari’s ecosystem on the edge of survival.” July 2021.)

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