Meeting Abstract
Climate induced shifts in population distributions have been well documented globally across marine and terrestrial ecosystems. In contrast, few studies have focused on local distribution shifts in small scale variable environments. The rocky intertidal shore is known for exhibiting a highly thermally variable environment ranging up to 40°C within an elevational gradient of a few hundred meters and temporal range of hours. This extreme thermal variability has led to the exploitation of intertidal shores in global warming research. An individual-based simulation was created to test a here newly developed rule-based size-dependent species distribution model of a well understood intertidal population of Petrolisthes cinctipes crabs found at Fort Ross State Historic Park, California. The model implemented the use of real environmental, behavioral, and physiological data collected from Ft. Ross. A future environmental thermal profile, generated here, was employed in the simulation to predict the distribution of the population in response to warming. Results predict the population will respond to warming by shifting their distribution lower in the intertidal zone as well as decreasing population abundance. Local population abundance and distribution shifts affect individual relationships across all levels from predators and prey to competitors and symbionts. These changes in relationships could result in significant repercussions to community dynamics, potentially fostering ecosystem-wide community alterations. The generated model and simulation, created in the modeling software NetLogo, could be applied to similar systems of less tractable organisms responding to biotic and abiotic variables across local or global elevational gradients.
