Collaborative Research: Integrated distribution models for North American mammals as tests of niche conservatism.

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Mapping animal populations is a powerful approach for learning what factors are important tothe species. By comparing records of where animals are common, rare, or absent with localenvironmental conditions researchers can quantify the relative effects of habitat, climate, andhuman disturbances. The proliferation of new animal data from camera traps and citizenscientists allows these questions to be asked at larger scales, but this also introduces a newproblem of local specialization - do bears in Florida respond to the environment in the sameways as bears in Maine? Can we have one model that predicts a species abundance across itsrange? This project will address this question by evaluating to what extent different populationsare consistent in their response to environmental factors across the country. The resulting mapswill show where mammal species are more or less common, which will be useful forconservation and wildlife management. Furthermore, the results will also highlight which localor national environmental factors are driving these patterns, which could be useful whenmitigating climate change, designating habitat corridors, or planning other active populationmanagement techniques. Comparing these results across 100 North American species willshow the broader importance of local ecological specialization in mammal evolution. In additionto publications, the results will be shared through the Wild Animals podcast and YouTubechannel, including the best camera trap footage.This project asks to what extent the ecological niche reflects range-wide tendencies of a species(i.e. phylogenetic conservatism) vs. local adaptation by a population. This is a critical questionnot only for understanding evolution, but also when considering how to manage populationsfacing climate change and anthropogenic disturbances. The project will test the hypothesis thatecological similarity should parallel phylogenetic similarity and also compare the degree of localadaptation to natural (climate and vegetation) vs. anthropogenic factors. To meet theseobjectives, researchers will create continental scale species distribution models forapproximately 100 North American mammal species using data integration techniques thatcombine traditional museum data with ‘born digital’ data from camera traps and citizen science.These new data include camera trap surveys at NEON sites and from the Snapshot USAprogram which runs annually in all 50 states. The Snapshot program surveys 1500 sites/yrthrough a massive collaboration between 150+ scientists, including many undergraduateclasses (800 students from 40 institutions) and underserved communities. The project willgrow this network by recruiting more participants, providing timely results that they can use withtheir students with prepared classroom modules, offering online data analysis workshops forparticipants, and making the data publicly available each year. This hierarchical, integrated,spatially-varying model approach will allow researchers to address new questions about thescale of ecological adaptation and whether natural factors still regulate most species or ifevolutionary responses to anthropogenic changes are outpacing these natural processes.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.