Meeting Abstract
Rising temperatures resulting from anthropogenically induced climate change have caused population distribution shifts over latitudes and altitudes. These range shifts often result in interspecific competition. Petrolisthes cinctipes, a porcelain crab dwelling in congregations under rocks in the mid-upper rocky intertidal zone, overlaps in range with Petrolisthes manimaculis, a competing congener species inhabiting the mid-lower intertidal zone. We implement an integrative ecological approach in which interspecific competition is addressed in efforts to predict the distribution of the model organism, P. cinctipes, under future climatic scenarios. This agent-based model applies predicted temperature profiles in conjunction with observed environmental (habitat temperature), physiological (Arrhenius breakpoint temperature), and behavioral (escape temperature and competition strength) data gathered from a P. cinctipes population at Fort Ross, CA. Rising temperatures correlate with a downward shift of the population to cooler microhabitats, leading to greater densities and increased interspecific competition. Modeling the heterogeneous thermal landscape of the intertidal zone resulting from elevational differences, tidal waves, and fluctuating solar radiation allows for extrapolation in predicting larger spatial scale distribution patterns. In predicting patterns of a highly variable environment, this model is applicable to similar multivariate systems with altitudinally distributed populations responding to biotic and abiotic factors.
