Paper published in Nature Climate Change using Niwot Ridge LTER data finds that ecoregion helps explain variation in responses to climate change in the American pika

To conserve species in a changing climate, we need to know how they respond to climate. But what if not all individuals respond in the same way? It makes sense that genetic variation within a species can shape its response to climate, but is there more to it? We gathered data from across the range of the American pika to show that this cold-adapted species responds a little differently to climate in every ecoregion, and that ecoregion is a better predictor of pika response to climate than genetic lineage, elevation or physiography, regardless of whether that response is a long-term range-shift, or short-term metapopulation dynamics.The Niwot Ridge LTER and our partner in pika citizen science--the Front Range Pika Project--teamed with many researchers across the US to compile the dataset needed to support this analysis, led by Adam B. Smith at the Missouri Botanical Garden and published today in Nature Climate Change.

The full paper can be found: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-019-0584-8