The world's biodiversity is constantly being threatened by warming temperatures and extreme changes in climate and weather patterns. And while that "doom and gloom" is the typical discourse surrounding how climate change is affecting biodiversity, another interesting aspect of the warming temperatures is how different species have been adapting over the decades.

Tuberculosis risks in meerkats increasing

As the Kalahari Desert in South Africa more physically stressed and therefore they have less time to forage during the day. The heat, combined with drought conditions from decreasing rainfall amounts, results in the decreasing availability of food as well. That widespread physical stress can lead to endemic diseases such as tuberculosis to end up in outbreaks, exacerbated by the fact that meerkats are a social species that interact in groups.

Because of the physical stress involved and less food availability, unhealthy conditions can turn endemic disease more frequently into severe outbreaks decreasing group sizes and putting groups at risk of extinction," an ecologist said.

Albatrosses, a monogamous species famous for mating for life, are seeing higher "divorce" rates as temperatures warm.

The rate of Black-browed albatross pairs that split up and found new mates rose to 8% during years of unusually warm water temperatures, researchers who studied more than 15,000 albatross pairs in the Falkland Islands over 15 years found.

The previous rate of divorce, 1% to 3%, typically involved female albatrosses finding a new mate as a result of an unsuccessful breeding season, scientists said. But during the years of atypical warmth, breakups rose even among couples that successfully reproduced.

Polar bears are inbreeding due to melting sea ice

Polar bear populations were found to have up to a 10% loss in genetic diversity over a 20-year period as a result of inbreeding due to habitat fragmentation. Scientists studied in Svalbard and found that the inbreeding correlated with a "rapid disappearance of Arctic sea ice."

The author of the study said that the lack of genetic diversity could also eventually lead to the species' inability to produce fertile offspring or withstand disease.

"With genetic diversity, when the population becomes so small, you'll find that there will be a higher chance of closely related individuals mating and producing offspring," he said. "But with that comes a risk in the sense that some of the traits ... that are recessive, will now basically be unmasked in the population."