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Climate adaptation

Three mechanisms may prevent extinction in response to rapid anthropogenic climate change: dispersal to more favourable climates, phenotypic plasticity and/or microevolution. We have been working to develop Columbian ground squirrels as a model mammalian system to investigate these mechanisms. In the past, we have used this information to determine that ground squirrel phenologies (i.e., the ecological trait most commonly affected by climate change) are heritable (and therefore, can evolve when subject to selection), phenotypically plastic, vary across populations differing in elevation and influence fitness. We are now building on these earlier findings to determine the physiological mechanism underlying observed climate-phenology-fitness relationships (e.g., body temperature profiles during hibernation, body composition and metabolic rate). We are also using experimental approaches (reciprocal translocation) to evaluate between population variation and simulate potential altitudinal dispersal events. Our aim is to use what we have learned from this highly tractable system to understand responses to climate change that simply can not be investigated in larger, more vagrant and less abundant components of Alberta’s biodiversity.

PI:  Dr. Jeffrey Lane (Professor, University of Saskatchewan)

​Duration: 12 years ongoing (2007-present)

Sociality and disease transmission

Evolution of life history traits

Environmental modulation of stress

Climate adaptation

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