This project addresses the role of climatic changes during the Pleistocene glacial-interglacial cycles on the distribution and evolution of species in the Great Basin of western North America. The investigator uses reconstructions of climatic conditions of the last glacial maximum (approximately 21,000 years before present) to reconstruct species distributions during this cold period and contrasts them with modern distributions. She then formulates hypotheses about the changes in distributional locations and sizes through time and tests these hypotheses using genetic data. She applies this methodology to four species of kangaroo rats (genus Dipodomys) distributed within the Great Basin of North America and evaluates the response of each species to climatic changes over the past 21,000 years.
This research aims to effectively test general theories on how Great Basin organisms responded to past climatic change. Understanding the relationships between climatic changes, distributional changes, and population structure can provide an important foundation for conservation efforts. For example, regions where high genetic diversity has accumulated may represent areas where species have persisted through past episodes of climate change, and should therefore be prioritized as potential protected areas as the Earth experiences future episodes of human-induced climate change.
