Elizabeth A. Hadly, Department of Biology, Stanford University Donald Grayson, Department of Anthropology, University of Washington
________________________________________
This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5). Increase in global mean temperatures will amount to 1.1-6.4?aC by the end of this century, with US western regional changes even greater. Beyond shifting ranges, impacts to our native biota are only now beginning to be investigated. It is critical that we take on the goal of determining reliable indicators of population persistence and overall species extinction risk. One of the best ways of assessing the myriad effects of rapid environmental change on our extant fauna is to study how these same species responded to climatic events of the recent past. Recent advances in molecular genetics, stable isotope research, archaeology, paleontology, morphometrics and climatic modeling can now be combined to reveal the thresholds behind population loss from the fossils themselves, an endeavor that has not yet been attempted. Here we propose to assemble a diverse team of established and beginning investigators to ascertain factors underlying population persistence, expansion and loss from the fossil record. Within our exemplar study system, the Great Basin, we propose to use a diverse model mammalian order, the Lagomorpha, to ask whether the fossil record can help us to identify survival thresholds in potentially endangered populations of mammals. In particular, we propose to investigate the expansion and extirpation dynamics of lagomorphs over the last 15,000 years against the backdrop of changing landscapes, climates, and human populations in the region. We will use a combination of fossil occurrence and relative abundance data, archaeology, morphometrics, isotopic data, analysis of both modern and ancient genetic diversity (phylochronology), population size and connectivity to ascertain the factors associated with population dynamics of this group. By focusing across this broad and varied landscape through some 15,000 years of dramatic environmental change, we will provide a conceptual and empirical package that will allow more precise predictions of the fate of extant mammals worldwide in the face of ongoing human-caused environmental change.
