94.4 FINAL WEB

NEWS
Evolutionary Biology / Psychology
CLIMATE
CHANGE AND
EVOLUTION
WHAT WOOD FROGS TELL US
ABOUT ADAPTATION TO CLIMATE
CHANGE
BY ISABEL TRINDADE
CAN YOU
LEARN MORE
THAN A FIFTH
GRADER?
ATTITUDES TOWARDS LEARNING
IN CHILDREN AND ADULTS
BY ODESSA GOLDBERG
IMAGE COURTESY OF FLICKR
IMAGE COURTESY OF VERYWELLFAMILY
Loss of biodiversity is just one of many grave consequences
due to climate change. Recent research sheds light on a
species’ capacity to escape extinction by evolving rapidly at
microgeographic scales. A study from the Skelly Lab of the Yale
School of the Environment replicated research from 2001 that
investigated how various populations of wood frogs, Rana sylvatica,
exhibited differing embryonic development characteristics in
response to factors associated with climate change.
The study sought to understand how certain species
could adapt to climate change. “Wood frogs are a great
study system because they form natural metapopulations
and are highly adapted to cold and therefore sensitive to
warming,” said A. Andis, a PhD candidate in the Skelly
lab. Results showed that embryos in 2018 developed at rates
fourteen to nineteen percent faster than those in 2001 on
average. Further, there was variation among embryonic
development rates across frog populations separated only
by small geographic differences, a pattern found in both
the 2001 and 2018 studies. Several environmental factors
attributed to climate change, including canopy cover and
pond temperature, influenced development rates.
“When it comes to predicting conservation outcomes into the
future, [scientists] tend to [ignore] the capacity for organisms
to adapt and variation within species and populations,” Andis
said. This study provides some hope that organisms can mediate
the effects of human environmental impacts. However, this
capacity is limited—“too much change, too quickly” still has
disastrous effects. Some species, unfortunately, may already
be approaching this rate limit or have passed it already, a
phenomenon known as “extinction debt.” ■
How much do you think you can learn in a year’s time? At
the Cognition and Development Lab at Yale, researchers
compared children’s and adults’ attitudes towards how
much knowledge they believed one could acquire in one year. The
research was driven by previous findings showing that children
are more optimistic than adults when it comes to knowledge
acquisition attitudes. Research scientist Kristi Lockhart sought
to see if shortened time frames, methods of learning, or types of
knowledge affected this attitude. Who was more optimistic?
Apparently, children. “Even though they made a distinction
of what they could learn [with different methods of learning]
if you look at some of their scores, they are still above average
[compared to] the adults,” Lockhart said.
But this optimism is not without its limits. Children ages
five to seven still believe two-year-olds are unable to learn
anything, making a bigger distinction between themselves and
the two-year-olds than themselves and adults. Additionally,
they distinguish themselves specifically, displaying a selfenhancement
effect; in other words, each child believes they
will be able to learn more than their peers.
But the question remains: why are the children so
optimistic? Lockhart has a few theories. First, this optimism
may be necessary to keep children motivated in schools. It
may not be unfounded, as adults routinely underestimate
how much children can learn. Conversely, children may
maintain this level of optimism because they don’t yet have
the metacognitive skills to consider the effort required by
knowledge acquisition. In early life, children seem to learn
without consciously exerting effort, potentially causing them
to view knowledge acquisition as easy. ■
38 Yale Scientific Magazine December 2021
www.yalescientific.org