Spatially heterogeneous impact of climate change on small mammals of montane California

Abstract

Resurveys of historical collecting localities have revealed range shifts, primarily leading edge expansions, which have been attributed to global warming. However, there have been few spatially replicated community-scale resurveys testing whether species' responses are spatially consistent. Here we repeated early twentieth century surveys of small mammals along elevational gradients in northern, central and southern regions of montane California. Of the 34 species we analysed, 25 shifted their ranges upslope or downslope in at least one region. However, two-thirds of ranges in the three regions remained stable at one or both elevational limits and none of the 22 species found in all three regions shifted both their upper and lower limits in the same direction in all regions. When shifts occurred, high-elevation species typically contracted their lower limits upslope, whereas low-elevation species had heterogeneous responses. For high-elevation species, site-specific change in temperature better predicted the direction of shifts than change in precipitation, whereas the direction of shifts by low-elevation species was unpredictable by temperature or precipitation. While our results support previous findings of primarily upslope shifts in montane species, they also highlight the degree to which the responses of individual species vary across geographically replicated landscapes.

Detecting and attributing the effect of climate change on the changes in the distribution of Qinghai-Tibet plateau large mammal species over the past 50 years

“…Several studies found that climate change caused heterogeneous shifts in the ranges of small mammals (Moritz et al 2008;Myers et al 2009;Rowe et al 2014). Similarly, our results also showed that changes in the eastern and western limits or the distribution center longitudes of several large mammal species could be attributed to climate change.…”

“…These characteristics may limit the variations in their ranges in response to climate change. Additionally, different mammal distributional changes may also be related to the spatially heterogeneous climate change in the QinghaiTibet plateau (Rowe et al 2014).…”

The relative influence of change in habitat and climate on elevation range limits in small mammals in Yosemite National Park, California, U.S.A.

“…Overall, our results seem to suggest that 1) mammalian elevation range shifts are not tightly coupled to climate or habitat, but of those that are 2) climate is the more important driver, albeit with a subsidiary role for habitat in shaping lower-edge range shifts. This suggests that different mechanisms that may underlie the Table 2 Observed elevational ranges of small mammals in the 1 Yosemite transect [5] compared with predictions from SDMs using climate, habitat, and climate + habitat predictors thresholded using the MSSS rule -no shift, C -contract, D -downward, U -upward, and NA -not applicable, i.e., when there was no convergence towards a model solution because the samples were all outside estimated range limits so no model was produced shifts in different parts of species' ranges [9,58]. However, our results may also implicate conflicting influences of climate and habitat on range shifts.…”

Climate change, collections and the classroom: using big data to tackle big problems

“…While the use of natural history "big data" to explore organismal responses to environmental change has skyrocketed over the past decade (Rowe et al 2014;Rubidge et al 2011), the value of these resources to undergraduate education is just beginning to be realized . As the ease of accessing and analyzing the wealth of information in natural history collections continues to increase, the opportunities for creating significant and exciting learning experiences for students are growing.…”

“…Because specimens and all associated data are both georeferenced and time-stamped, they provide critical resources for examination of changes in biodiversity over space and time (Johnson et al 2012;Lister 2011;Wandeler et al 2007). As a result, an increasing number of studies are using direct comparisons of historical and modern natural history specimens and associated information to document the impacts of climatic change (Moritz et al 2008;Rowe et al 2014;Tingley et al 2009). …”