| NSF Org: |
DEB Division Of Environmental Biology |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | August 27, 2015 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | May 1, 2017 |
| Award Number: | 1457524 |
| Award Instrument: | Standard Grant |
| Program Manager: |
Douglas Levey
DEB Division Of Environmental Biology BIO Directorate for Biological Sciences |
| Start Date: | September 1, 2015 |
| End Date: | August 31, 2020 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $192,913.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $231,400.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
FY 2016 = $6,900.00 FY 2017 = $31,587.00 |
| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
1 UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO ALBUQUERQUE NM US 87131-0001 (505)277-4186 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
1700 Lomas Blvd, NE Albuquerque NM US 87131-0001 |
| Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
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| Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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| Parent UEI: |
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| NSF Program(s): | POP & COMMUNITY ECOL PROG |
| Primary Program Source: |
01001617DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT 01001718DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT |
| Program Reference Code(s): |
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| Program Element Code(s): |
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| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.074 |
ABSTRACT
Considerable uncertainty exists about the effects of changing climates on the distributions of plants and animals. Most studies of recent climate change on species' geographic ranges are based on projections from computer models rather than measured responses from field studies. This research takes a very different and multi-tiered approach by using historical records and specimens with the necessary precision, geographic and temporal scale, and magnitude of observed climate change to produce important insights into the direct and indirect effects of climatic and nonclimatic factors on changes in species' geographic distributions. This research will resurvey field sites in the southwest United States last surveyed more than 70 years ago, which will not only advance our understanding of environmental changes but will establish a new benchmark for comparison of future changes. Federal land-management agencies will benefit from greater knowledge of the status of sensitive species and wildlife responses to climate change. Specimens and audio recordings collected will be available for ancillary studies. Results will be extended broadly to the public through talks, popular press and media, and museum displays, including new exhibits of the San Diego Natural History Museum and the Oakland Museum of California. The National Park Service Science and Education Office will distribute results widely through videos and podcasts to train their interpreters on the biological effects of environmental change and to provide interpretive materials for their visitor centers. Undergraduates, graduate student and postdoctoral researchers will participate in this study, learning field and lab techniques, natural history, physiological methods and modeling. Results and data will be shared with scientists and the general public through websites and online databases.
This project will resurvey sites that were sampled from 1908-1945 to examine the impact of 20th century climate change on small mammal and bird communities in Sonoran, Mojave, and Great Basin deserts. These areas have warmed greatly over the last 50 years, with the average annual temperatures increasing up to 2°C. The research will advance understanding of animal responses to climate change by: developing new models that mechanistically project species' ranges by linking climate through important physiological thresholds of temperature and water stress; developing novel tests to examine whether climate change results in species shifting their geographic ranges individually or whether whole communities of species shift similarly; and testing if body sizes and diets of species have responded to climate change. Birds and mammals will be resurveyed at 105 sites. Both audio and physical voucher specimens will be collected and made available for future reanalysis. Standard morphological data will be collected for birds and mammal skulls. Ratios of carbon and nitrogen isotopes will be measured from tissues. Multispecies occupancy models will account for detectability in historical and current surveys to develop unbiased estimators of local colonization and extinction of species and changes in community composition in response to site-level characteristics. Measures of thermal and hydric stress at and above the upper limit of the thermal neutral zone will be made for 12 species of mammals to develop models of heat stress that can be validated.
PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH
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PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT
Disclaimer
This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
The climate of the deserts of the American southwest are warming rapidly and importantly impacting plant and animal communities. Climate change is expected to drive many species towards extinction and understanding the impacts of climate change on individuals and communities is vital to projecting how warming will affect animal populations in the future. To this end, we compared the occupancy status and species richness of current bird and mammal populations to historical measurements at sites in the Mojave desert of California that were surveyed in the early 1900's. These data and models allowed us to measure population change across time for individual species of mammals and birds, and attribute these changes to changes in environmental temperature and precipitation. We also sought to link bird and mammal population changes to constraints imposed on the physiology and behavior of individual species using biophysical models that used climate data to model physiological effects of increasing environmental temperatures on water and energy balance.
To ground these models, we used existing physiological data on desert birds and collected new data on the thermoregulatory performance of small desert mammals. We found that at many sites bird populations had declined significantly and species occupying the hottest, driest sites were least likely to persist (Fig. 1, www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1908791116). Birds and mammals as endotherms, maintain high stable body temperatures at the expense of large energy and water demands. Our models show that these water and energy demands are projected to increase in the future and that the increasing water needs for large species make them especially vulnerable to climate change. Our simulations estimating changing water demands may explain the significant decline in larger birds that have insect and meat diets (Fig. 3). In contrast to birds, we found little change in species occupancy or species richness in overlapping small mammal communities. Small mammal communities remained very stable over time compared to birds. Our simulation models focused on water and energy demands suggest that the nocturnal behavior of most small mammals and their use of burrows buffers them from the direct effects of climate change. This thermal buffering is important because it reduces thermoregulatory costs for small mammals and because small mammals are much less tolerant of high temperatures compared to small birds.
The project provided training opportunities for six undergraduate students, all minorities and under-represented groups, including three women, which included field experiences with wild animals and laboratory training as well as a PhD student. The project had impacts on the discipline of ecological physiology by providing important new insights into the responses of diurnal and nocturnal rodents to exposure to high environmental temperatures. These studies provide new insights into the plasticity in physiological responses in small mammals by looking at site-based and seasonal differences in thermoregulatory profiles for rodents in both summer and winter at three different sites. Data include measurements of thermoregulatory performance of small mammals at environmental temperatures in the cold and in the heat to the animals' upper thermal limits. Data of this quality and scope did not exist in the literature before this project and will provide a baseline for examining animal exposure limits to rapidly warming environments now and in the future.
Last Modified: 10/27/2020
Modified by: Blair O Wolf
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