Small Mammals as Indicators of Climate, Biodiversity, and Ecosystem Change

Hope, Andrew; Waltari, Eric; Morse, R.; Cook, Joseph; Flamme, Melanie; Talbot, Sandra

This is a time of rapid environmental changes in Alaska and effective management of natural resources benefits from detailed knowledge of the past and present, and our most informed predictions of future biotic responses to these changes (Barnosky et al. 2012). Species that have evolved within tundra habitats over multiple glacial cycles are not only best adapted to high-latitude and high-elevation environments, but may also respond more slowly to change. This equates to a broadening overlap between distinct communities as forest species advance along environmental gradients faster than tundra species retreat. Less certain is how different communities will interact in regions of overlap, so-called contact zones, such as occurs across latitudinal, longitudinal, and elevational gradients through many Alaska parks. High-latitude and high-elevation areas may constitute future refugial areas for tundra and alpine species respectively and these regions within Alaska parks will likely constitute critical areas for future research to inform resource management. Studies of hybridization, competition, disease, associated species such as parasites, physiological tolerances, phenology, and evolutionary adaptation to novel environments could all be facilitated by focusing on small mammal communities and continuing to build spatially extensive and temporally deep archives from parks. Preserving our natural resources within Alaska parks will remain a challenge, particularly considering the predicted changes in community dynamics and species distributions. We provide a framework for small mammal fieldwork that can be built on through time; similar effort is needed for other facets of biodiversity.

Small Mammals as Indicators of Climate, Biodiversity, and Ecosystem Change

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