There is a compelling societal need to understand how climate change is affecting the world's biota. The proposed project will use the Gordon Alexander grasshopper collection and a new resurvey program to measure the effects of climate change on the grasshoppers found along the Front Range of Colorado. The Alexander collection is composed of over 24,000 pinned and labeled grasshoppers collected during the 1930's to the 1960's from the Rocky Mountain and plains regions of Colorado. During the survey years of 1958-1960, Alexander recorded the presence of over 65,000 grasshoppers from repeatedly sampled sites along an elevational gradient from Boulder to Niwot Ridge, Colorado. By resurveying Alexander's elevational transect, the proposed project will study the effects of a changing climate on the timing of life history events, elevational ranges and body sizes of a well studied and economically important group of organisms.
The Alexander resurvey project will make information about climate change and the importance of museums and biodiversity readily available to a wide audience via a project related website. This project will also train undergraduate and graduate students in the techniques of curating, maintaining and databasing collections, as well as the use of collections and their associated data to test ecological questions.
This sponsored project utilized the recently curated and databased Alexander Orthoptera Collection coupled with a new resurvey program (2007-2014), an analysis of regional climate data and an experimental approach to measure the effects of climate change on insects. The Alexander Collection is composed of over 24,000 grasshoppers collected during the 1930s to the 1960s from the Rocky Mountain and plains regions of Colorado. Approximately 14,000 of these pinned and labeled grasshoppers are voucher specimens from a three year (1958-1960) National Science Foundation (NSF) sponsored survey project. During these years, Alexander processed over 65,000 grasshoppers by conducting weekly surveys at 8 sites along an elevational gradient from the high plains near the city of Boulder (1530 m) to the alpine environments of Niwot Ridge (3,660 m). Because of the quality and type of data provided by the Alexander Collection and its associated notebooks, the goals of this current project were to quantify the potential effects of regional climate change on the 1) phenology (timing of life history events) and behavior, 2) elevational ranges and 3) morphological characteristics of a well-studied and economically important group of organisms. With the support of the National Science Foundation, we implemented an extensive 8 year resurvey program that processed over 180,000 grasshoppers (for which we have field note data for) and that curated, databased and added to the University of Colorado’s Entomology section over 17,000 grasshoppers and other insects. To date, this grant has also supported nine peer reviewed manuscripts. The key findings of this study include the following. First, the continuous 50 year old weather data from five weather stations shows that regional climatic change is elevation dependent, with most of the warming occurring at middle elevations. In turn, the greatest phenological advancements (the timing to adulthood of grasshoppers) have been associated with these warmer sites and inconsistent or not present at sites that have shown little warming. Year to year affects were also present, with all communities experiencing a nearly 30 day advancement to adulthood in 2012, the second hottest year in Colorado over the last 118 years. Second, an examination of the dependence of both feeding performance and locomotion on temperature over the last 50 years suggests that performance shifts can account for changes in abundance between the initial surveys in 1958–1960 and recent surveys since 2006. Third, the ability for species to disperse along the gradient can explain their associated changes in body size with elevation, with winged high dispersal species not being as locally adapted as wingless species associated with low dispersal potential. Fourth, while grasshopper phenology has been dramatically effected by recent warming patterns, our surveys showed little evidence that grasshopper species are currently shifting their elevational distributions or that grasshopper morphology has changed much in the last 50 years. Intellectual Merits: There is a compelling societal need to understand how climate change is affecting the world’s biota. Understanding how these changes affect natural communities of interacting organisms is crucial to being able to predict the trajectory of future changes. This project utilized a historic collection, a new resurvey program and an experimental approach to quantify the effects of climate change on organisms and to explore how life history characteristics, the ecophysiology of organisms and levels of local adaptation make some species and populations more or less likely to respond to climate change. This project also highlights the value of natural history collections in understanding the effects of global climate change and land use patterns on the earth’s biota. Broader Impacts: This project, its goals and findings have made climate change information and the importance of museums and biodiversity readily available to a wide audience. During the 2007-2014 seasons, this project trained 5 graduate students, over 33 undergraduates and 5 high school students on how museums and field research can be utilized to propose and test a variety of evolutionary, ecological, conservation and climate change related hypotheses. The role of this project and the utility of collections in research and technology have also been themes highlighted in numerous informatics and museum oriented classes, with students often developing projects that have helped build the project web site (http://ghopclimate.colorado.edu/) and explored the history of the project and its previous members. The project investigators worked with middle and high school teachers to develop materials and employ methods that could be used to teach key principles in climate change biology. The project investigators also presented this research to and worked with land managers, middle and high school classes and a variety of local organizations and science cafes. This project was also highlighted in numerous print and video media.
