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经过充分研究和广泛分布的蜥蜴的大陆分布的影响。该模型将把个体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量如何限制蜥蜴的活动，如觅食。因此，摄食活动与生存和繁殖有关。通过监测全美范围内蜥蜴的行为和内部活动，研究人员将能够比较这些属性的差异如何导致不同地区的气候对蜥蜴的影响做出不同的预测。然后，PI将评估在各种气候变化情景下，生理进化将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，该方法考虑进化适应和基因流动如何帮助确定物种的地理范围。对于在保护方面有重要应用的生物学家来说，预测物种的范围以及它们在环境变化条件下将如何变化是一个重大挑战。现有的模型要么未能纳入重要的过程，要么过于抽象，无法应用于真实人群。这个项目将通过将生态过程融入到为真实蜥蜴物种量身定做的模型中来扩展我们的知识。这个模型可以在未来推广并应用于其他物种。该项目将为亚利桑那州、北卡罗来纳州和德克萨斯州的三所大学的研究和教育使命做出重大贡献。它将培训来自代表性不足群体的学生，将开发关于这些新模型和方法的跨大学研讨会，并应导致资源管理者可以使用软件来预测对环境变化的生物学反应。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，准备非技术性出版物，并开发带有摘要和为公众设计的活动的网页。

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.