Journal
PLOS ONE
Volume 9, Issue 8, Pages -Publisher
PUBLIC LIBRARY SCIENCE
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0104648
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Funding
- National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship [0750758]
- National Science Foundation award [1111533]
- University of Utah Global Change and Sustainability Center
- Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology
- Oregon Zoo Future for Wildlife Fund
- Wilderness Society Gloria Barron Scholarship
- American Society of Mammalogists
- Direct For Computer & Info Scie & Enginr
- Division Of Computer and Network Systems [1111533] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
- Division Of Graduate Education
- Direct For Education and Human Resources [0750758] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
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Predicting habitat suitability under climate change is vital to conserving biodiversity. However, current species distribution models rely on coarse scale climate data, whereas fine scale microclimate data may be necessary to assess habitat suitability and generate predictive models. Here, we evaluate disparities between temperature data at the coarse scale from weather stations versus fine-scale data measured in microhabitats required for a climate-sensitive mammal, the American pika (Ochotona princeps). We collected two years of temperature data in occupied talus habitats predicted to be suitable (high elevation) and unsuitable (low elevation) by the bioclimatic envelope approach. At low elevations, talus surface and interstitial microclimates drastically differed from ambient temperatures measured on-site and at a nearby weather station. Interstitial talus temperatures were frequently decoupled from high ambient temperatures, resulting in instantaneous disparities of over 30 degrees C between these two measurements. Microhabitat temperatures were also highly heterogeneous, such that temperature measurements within the same patch of talus were not more correlated than measurements at distant patches. An experimental manipulation revealed that vegetation cover may cool the talus surface by up to 10 degrees C during the summer, which may contribute to this spatial heterogeneity. Finally, low elevation microclimates were milder and less variable than typical alpine habitat, suggesting that, counter to species distribution model predictions, these seemingly unsuitable habitats may actually be better refugia for this species under climate change. These results highlight the importance of fine-scale microhabitat data in habitat assessments and underscore the notion that some critical refugia may be counterintuitive.
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