Climate change impacts on wildlife can vary by biological sex

Research shows that slowing biodiversity loss will require more knowledge of sex-specific responses to climate hazards like heat waves and extreme temperature fluctuations.

Biological sex can be an important factor in predicting how animal and plant populations respond to temperature changes, from sea turtles whose sex is determined by the heat on the beach where they hatch, to female Arctic caribou that migrate through predator territory in years of earlier snowmelt to replenish their energy reserves for nursing young.

Yet few environmental studies and even fewer conservation plans take these differences into account, according to research published in Nature Communications.