CAREER: Do Species Track Climate? Paleoecology to Disentangle Niche Dynamics

气候是决定植物和动物为什么生活在那里的一个重要因素。当气候变化时，我们预计植物和动物可能会被迫在整个景观中追踪它们喜欢的气候。确定植物和动物对气候变化的反应程度是当今生态学和保护生物学中最紧迫的问题之一。为了迎接这一挑战，本项目将审查过去在大陆范围和地点一级对环境变化的反应。外展活动的核心将为学生和公众带来化石发现的经验，同时展示气候变化对生态系统的影响。这些机会将覆盖来自更广泛的亚特兰大社区的人们，以及参加非洲保护古生物学计划促进的研讨会的东非本科生。这项研究将估计自上一次冰川以来，个别哺乳动物和植物生物群落所表现出的“气候保真度”。它将计算观察到的植物和动物所占据的气候变化与城市和农业地区气候相对应的程度，从而创建一个“人类耐受指数”。使用这些方法，它将通过比较植物与动物的相对保真度来展示气候在多大程度上推动了营养级的范围确定。通过研究生态系统对怀俄明州自然陷阱洞穴重大干旱的反应，研究人员可以测试关于长期生态系统对降水的反应的假设，同时验证预测的物种水平的气候反应。通过了解物种如何应对气候变化，我们可以确定优先考虑哪些物种和策略，以保护生物多样性。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Climate is an important factor in determining why plants and animals live where they do. When climate shifts, we anticipate that plants and animals may be forced to track their preferred climates across the landscape. Identifying the extent to which plants and animals will respond to changing climate is one of the most pressing questions in ecology and conservation biology today. To meet this challenge, this project will examine past responses to environmental change on both the continental scale and at the site level. The core of the outreach activities will bring the fossil discovery experience to students and the public while demonstrating the effects of climate change on ecological systems. These opportunities will reach people from across the broader Atlanta community, in addition to East African undergraduate students who participate in workshops facilitated by the Conservation Paleobiology in Africa program. This research will estimate the ‘climate fidelity’ that individual mammal and plant biomes have exhibited since the last glaciation. It will calculate the extent to which observed changes in the climates that plants and animals occupy correspond with the climates of urban and agricultural regions, creating a ‘human tolerance index.’ Using these methods, it will demonstrate how much climate drives range determination across trophic levels by comparing the relative fidelity of plants versus animals. By examining ecosystem responses to a major drought at Natural Trap Cave, Wyoming, researchers can test hypotheses about long-term ecosystem responses to precipitation while validating predicted species-level climate responses. By understanding how species respond to changing climate, we can identify which species and strategies to prioritize in order to conserve biodiversity going forward.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.