LTREB Renewal: Evolutionary Dynamics in a Rapidly Changing Environment

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The purpose of this study is to understand how natural selection changes over time for a species experiencing a rapidly changing environment. This research builds on an extensive long-term (since 1962) data set of individually marked yellow-bellied marmots at Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory in Colorado. The project will measure changes in key physiological and behavioral traits of individual marmots, and determine their influence on reproduction and survival in this model organism. This work is important because it will provide new data and insights to better understand the limits of evolutionary responses to environmental change. The work will continue a long term record of changes in fitness (i.e., reproductive success and survival) for populations of the marmot inhabiting different elevations, and linking this to traits like body mass, aggression, and dominance behavior in these mammals. Continuation of this data provides a valuable window on the effects of climate change on a hibernating mammal, and a priceless data set that can be used to explore both population and evolutionary dynamics. Broader impacts of this project will include: recruitment and training of graduate and undergraduate students from under-represented groups; wide dissemination of research results to scientific audiences and the general public via scientific and popular articles and talks, and working with science journalists; and maintenance of a blog and website to provide public information on marmot biology and ecology. This project will evaluate changes in the environment, in selection pressure, and in trait variance of marmot populations at both low and high elevation sites at Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory. The work will expand earlier analyses on body mass traits such as mass at emergence, rate of mass gain, and mass before hibernation. Analyses of changes in selection and in trait distributions will be based on the past 40 years and the next 2-3 years. The PI will focus analyses on behavioral and endocrine traits using 12-15 years of data, and use a combination of path analysis to test for causality and the multivariate animal model to decompose trait variance into its environmental and genetic components. By quantifying how selection on traits changes over time, how changes in reproductive success and survival affects traits, and how changes in these traits affect reproduction and survival, this research will integrate proximate and ultimate mechanisms and use novel approaches to study causal inference.