Desert songbirds may face expanding threat of lethal dehydration

(University of Massachusetts at Amherst) A new study of songbird dehydration and survival risk during heat waves in the desert Southwest suggests that some birds are at risk of lethal dehydration and mass die-offs when water is scarce, and the risk is expected to increase as climate change advances. Using physiological data, hourly temperature maps and modeling, Alex Gerson at UMass Amherst and others investigated how rates of evaporative water loss varied in five bird species with varied body m...