Understanding how long-term climate where a species lives impacts their responses to annual climate

What is it about?

We approach understanding where species live and how they may respond to shifts in climate by looking at the way populations across the range respond differently to annual climate. Wood frogs are a widely distributed species in North America, and we use counts of their egg masses to understand how population size varies not only by year but also by where that population is located in the overall geographic range (and thus the type of climate they normally experience). For example, we would predict a population of wood frogs in a colder, northern portion of the range might respond differently to a very cold winter one year than a population from a much warmer, southern portion of the range.

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Why is it important?

Species distribution modeling is important in understanding how species ranges may shift with changing landscape pressures. For example, urbanization, climate, and disease are all large-scale factors that may change the way populations persist and grow or decline across a species' range. We aim to understand these fluctuations using a model that allows for populations to respond differently across time and space (i.e., where they live in the range). Not all populations experience the same long-term clime (e.g., decades of colder vs. warmer winters depending on how far north or south you are). Additionally, understanding the impacts of climate on something like population growth rates allow for a deeper understanding of population trends and more predictive power for understanding range shifts.

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