HUMPHRIES, Murray M; University of Alberta: Bioenergetic prediction of climate change impacts on northern mammals

Physiological ecology has revealed much about how animal physiology varies with environmental circumstances, but relatively little about how this variation, in turn, influences the distribution and abundance of animals. Completing this link will enable mechanism-based prediction of the impacts of changing environments on northern wildlife populations. Energy metabolism is an obvious trait to study in this regard, because it integrates the acquisition and allocation of resources, and thus may serve as a direct link between environmental conditions and population patterns. I describe two modeling approaches that permit use of basic physiological data to predict the responses of northern mammals to climate change. Both approaches predict major effects of small temperature changes on some mammal species and identify the critical physiological data needed to anticipate the effects of climate change on a wider diversity of northern wildlife.