CLIMATE CHANGE:

Global temperatures over the last 65 Myr. Indicate that we are currently in a
relatively “cool period”

• Quarternary climate cycles are natural experiments

• Late Pleistocene climate change
o Pleistocene glaciation ~18,000 years ago
o “younger dryas and bolling allerod”

o “Medieval warming” occurred ~800-110 years ago

• FUTURE WARMING:
 By 2050, hotter than Homo sapiens has ever experienced, by 2100, hotter than
most mammal species have experienced
o The rate at which the warming is happening is the most worrisome-
Medieval, late 1900s, and future warming are all very high rates
(compared to past warmings)
• No single record can be used to recreate temperature
• Pleiocene was likely a few degrees warmer (which we will experience in the
next 100 years)
Animals responding to climate change:
• Pikas are the poster-child for climate change in the American West; live in
telo slopes, on haypiles and cannot handle warm temperatures
o Becoming confined to high elevations; had been historically more
pervasive across the American west
o Some populations are eradicated because they are so small in number
 o Decreasing the pika population size causes a decrease in genetic
variation, few individuals cannot maintain the same level of genetic
diversity
 Easier to lose than to gain genetic diversity (mutation takes
some time to accumulate)
• Red squirrels are giving birth earlier in response to more food availability at
that time (just before a species expands its range)
• Species can show a decrease in body size in response to warming
o In CA, the Mediterranean climate can be difficult
 Ground squirrels are more affected by precipitation than by
temperature (larger due to increased precip. in norcal)
 The CA situation (in which temperature and precipitation are
not correlated allows for interesting study design)
o Increaing glaciers are not due to colder temperatures, but rather
increased precip.
• Body size of the pack rat decreases with increasing temperature
• Many species expand poleward (in some cases equatorial contraction)
o Gross majority of species are moving north with decreasing glaciation
o Mountain beaver (last species in the genus) is restricted to coastal Pac.
Northwest Douglas fir forests
o Nine-banded armadillo is limited by the # of freeze days (max=2
weeks), moving north as climate warms
o Dormouse is not able to remain in hibernation because it is awoken
due to warmth, dies because it doesn't have enough resources to
sustain the hibernation if it wakes
o Ecological niche modeling: determining what the range of species will
be
o Range contraction of the flying squirrel as a result of the forest die-off
(pine beetle is limited by freezing days, so during warm times it eats
more pine)
 o Future contraction of the grizzly bear is may also be related to tree die-
off since the mothers must accumulate fat from pine cones before
hibernation; conifer presence is a source of carbs
o Due to range expansion, grizzly bears are now encountering polar
bears pizzly bears
• Great American Biotic Interchange
o Tectonic movement caused uplift of the Panamanian isthmus causing
N. American species to move south and S. American species to move
north

o N. American species that went south were more successful than the S.
American species that went north
 Most originally s. American species went extinct
• We are currently facilitating global invasion
o 71% of Patagonia species came from the Great American Biotic
Interchange
o 15% from endemic mammalian species
o 19% due to anthropogenic causes
• Human expansion:
o Genetic evidence indicates that there was coastal colonization from
north to south from Asia
o Ice-free corridor east of the Rocky Mountains may have been another
way that humans colonized
• Pleistocene-Holocene Transition:
 o We replaced many of the larger animals, cause of extinction
 Most of the extinctions occurred at the bimodal peak for
mammal body size; most were mammals, herbivores
 We caused dramatic changes in geographic range of plants and
animals
o CA condor had a large range/distribution, present along the coast,
scavenges for prey
o The extinction event occurred earlier in Australia than in N. America
• 2008-1/4 of all mammal species are threatened
o Extinction can happen quickly, while speciation cannot (the average
mammalian species takes 2-5 myr to evolve)

o Warming also caused changes to mammalian ecosystem rise of C4

grasses (which do better in arid conditions)
 Led to decrease in mammalian browsers and increase in
mammalian grazers