Principal Investigator: Lauren Buckley

Most predictions of how animals will move in changing climates rely on statistically relating an animal’s current location to environmental conditions. This approach ignores potentially important aspects of an animal’s biology including size, physiology, and behavior. My research focuses on developing bottom-up models that predict distributions directly from an animal’s traits and environmental conditions by modeling the energy use of individuals and populations. Ongoing research applies the model to populations of a widespread North American lizard, Sceloporus undulatus, to examine whether geographic variation in traits influences range predictions. Lizards from different populations are suited to live in different areas and are predicted to respond differently to a climate warming of 3°C, contrasting the predictions of statistical models. While all populations are predicted to shift northward in response to climate warming, the extent of the predicted northward shift depends on the lizard’s traits. The research suggests that mechanistic modeling approaches that consider an animal’s biology will be essential to realistic predictions of how animals will respond to climate change. The research points to the importance of biological factors such as adaptation of physiology, interactions with other organisms, and movement limitations. My research is focused on incorporating these factors into range models.