Niche shifting in response to warming climate after the last glacial maximum: inference from genetic data and niche assessments in the chisel-toothed kangaroo rat (Dipodomys microps)

Abstract

During Pleistocene glacial-interglacial cycles, the geographic range is often assumed to have shifted as a species tracks its climatic niche. Alternatively, the geographic range would not necessarily shift if a species can adapt in situ to a changing environment. The potential for a species to persist in place might increase with the diversity of habitat types that a species exploits. We evaluate evidence for either range shift or range stability between the last glacial maximum (LGM) and present time in the chisel-toothed kangaroo rat (Dipodomys microps), an endemic of the Great Basin and Mojave deserts. We modeled how the species' range would have changed if the climatic niche of the species remained conserved between the LGM and present time. The climatic models imply that if D. microps inhabited the same climatic niche during the LGM as it does today, the species would have persisted primarily within the warm Mojave Desert and expanded northwards into the cold Great Basin only after the LGM. Contrary to the climatic models, the mitochondrial DNA assessment revealed signals of population persistence within the current distribution of the species throughout at least the latest glacial-interglacial cycle. We concluded that D. microps did not track its climatic niche during late Pleistocene oscillations, but rather met the challenge of a changing environment by shifting its niche and retaining large portions of its distribution. We speculate that this kind of response to fluctuating climate was possible because of 'niche drifting', an alteration of the species' realized niche due to plasticity in various biological characters. Our study provides an example of an approach to reconstruct species' responses to past climatic changes that can be used to evaluate whether and to what extent taxa have capacity to shift their niches in response to the changing environment -information becoming increasingly important to predicting biotic responses to future environmental changes.

How specialized is a diet specialist? Niche flexibility and local persistence through time of the Chisel‐toothed kangaroo rat

“…an ability to shift its realized niche) coupled with a phylogenetically based suite of morphological adaptations that predispose it, but do not require it, to consume Atriplex when present (Csuti ; Mares et al . ; Jezkova, Olah‐Hemmings & Riddle ).…”

Multi‐dimensional biodiversity hotspots and the future of taxonomic, ecological and phylogenetic diversity: A case study of North American rodents

“…Over Quaternary time-scales, range dynamics, dietary shifts, extinctions, extirpations and re-colonizations have been documented for rodents in relationship to glacial-interglacial climate oscillations (Barnosky, Koch, Feranec, Wing, & Shabel, 2004;Blois, McGuire, & Hadly, 2010;Grayson, 2011;Jezkova, Olah-Hemmings, & Riddle, 2011;Lessa, Cook, & Patton, 2003;Riddle et al, 2014;Terry, Guerre, & Taylor, 2017;Terry, Li, & Hadly, 2011). Finally, over the past century, the influence of climate, land-use and vegetation change has further altered present-day rodent communities Rowe & Terry, 2014;Rowe, Terry, & Rickart, 2011;Walsh et al, 2016).…”

Complex evolutionary history of the pallid dotted‐blue butterfly (Lycaenidae: Euphilotes pallescens) in the Great Basin of western North America

“…). Similarly, a large number of locally distributed haplotypes were observed in Great Basin populations of rodents (Hafner et al ., ; Hafner & Upham, ; Jezkova et al ., ) and in a species of velvet ant (Wilson & Pitts, ). In contrast, in another velvet ant species, a single haplotype was found in populations across the Great Basin (Wilson & Pitts, ).…”

“…Given the greater amount of genetic diversity that we observed in southern populations, it is possible that the history of E. pallescens populations in the south was different from that experienced by populations in the north‐west. The southern history might have involved a larger refugial population or populations, because of the predicted climatic stability of the region during glacial cycles (Jezkova et al ., ; Wilson et al ., ), although such hypotheses cannot be directly tested at this time.…”