Collaborative Research: Incorporating Physiological Variation in Mechanistic Range Models for Ecological Forecasting

这些科学家将使用计算机模型来调查气候变化对一种研究得很好的广泛分布的蜥蜴的大陆分布的影响。该模型将把单个蜥蜴的属性联系起来，以评估整个蜥蜴种群如何适应特定的环境条件。例如，该模型考虑了温度和降雨如何限制蜥蜴的活动，如进食。因此，进食活动与生存和繁殖有关。通过监测整个美国蜥蜴的行为和测量蜥蜴的内部活动，研究人员将能够比较这些属性的变化如何导致不同地区气候对蜥蜴的不同预测。然后，pi将评估在各种气候变化情景下，生理进化如何影响蜥蜴的分布。这个项目将为一种新的建模方法奠定基础，这种方法考虑了进化适应和基因流动如何帮助确定物种的地理范围。对生物学家来说，预测物种的分布范围以及它们在环境变化条件下如何变化是一项重大挑战，而生物学家对环境保护有着重要的应用。现有的模型要么不能包含重要的过程，要么过于抽象，无法应用于实际人群。这个项目将扩大我们的知识，将生态过程纳入一个模型，为一个真正的蜥蜴物种量身定制。这个模型可以推广并应用于其他物种。该项目将对亚利桑那州、北卡罗来纳州和德克萨斯州三所大学的研究和教育任务作出重大贡献。它将培训来自代表性不足的群体的学生，将开发关于这些新模型和方法的跨大学讲习班，并应导致资源管理人员可用的软件来预测对环境变化的生物反应。项目参与者除了撰写通常的科学论文外，还将提供公开讲座，编写非技术出版物，并开发包含为公众设计的摘要和活动的网页。

These scientists will use computer models to investigate the impacts of climate change on the continental distribution of a well studied and widespread lizard. The model will link the attributes of individual lizards to assess how whole populations of lizards adapt to specific environmental conditions. For example, the model considers how temperature and rainfall limit lizard activity, such as feeding. Feeding activity is then related to survival and reproduction. By monitoring the behavior and measuring internal activity of lizards across the entire United States, the investigators will be able to compare how variation in these attributes leads to different predictions about how climate in different regions should affect lizards. Then the PIs will evaluate how the evolution of physiology would affect the distribution of lizards under various climate change scenarios. This project will set the stage for a new modeling approach that considers how evolutionary adaptation and gene flow can help determine the geographic range of a species. Predicting the ranges of species and how they will shift during conditions of environmental change is a major challenge for biologists that has important applications to conservation. Existing models either fail to incorporate important processes or are too abstract to apply to real populations. This project will expand our knowledge by incorporating ecological processes into a model that is tailored to a real species of lizards. This model could then be generalized and applied to other species in the future. The project will make significant contributions to the missions of research and education at three universities in Arizona, North Carolina and Texas. It will train students from under-represented groups, will develop cross-university workshops on these new models and approaches, and should lead to software usable by resource managers to forecast biological responses to environmental change. The project participants will provide public lectures, prepare non-technical publications, and develop web pages with summaries and activities designed for the public, in addition to writing the usual scientific papers.