Webinar: Species distribution models and future extinction risk of reptiles and amphibians
Channel: Conservation and Adaptation Resources Toolbox
Date: 2015-04-23

Title: Ecophysiological species distribution models and future extinction risk of reptiles and amphibians

Presenter: Barry Sinervo, Professor, University of California, Santa Cruz

Date: February 18th, 2015, at 10am MT

Abstract:

Standard species distribution models (SDM) use climate layers to determine a species “climate” niche and then project the species distribution to future time points as climate warms or dries, but such models do not take into account evolved physiological or ecological differences among species that might impact resistance to warm spells and / or long-term droughts. Here I will describe the relationships between climate layers and operative thermal and hydric environments for reptiles and amphibians. I will derive a general class of models that can be used in SDM which allow for evolved changes in physiology to be incorporated in the modeling. Models are implemented with standard [R] packages for SDM such as dismo and biomod2. In addition, I will describe how other ecological interactions such as competition for thermal niches can be used to model the impact of climate driven extinctions of cool-adapted taxa (e.g., montane taxa) arising from the invasion of a warm-adapted competitor (e.g., lowland taxa) that might expand its range under climate warming.

About the Presenter:

Barry Sinervo, Full Professor, University of California, Santa Cruz, is an evolutionary biologist who conducts research on Behavioral Ecology, Game Theory and the Biotic Impacts of Climate Change. He received his HBSc from Dalhousie University with a double major in Mathematics and Biology, PhD from the Zoology Department, University of Washington, and was a Miller Research Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley He is currently researching contemporary extinctions of reptiles and amphibians and changes in plant communities driven by climate change, at sites distributed on five continents, leading a multinational research team of scientists developing physiological models of the biotic impacts of climate change on diverse biological systems, and measuring the biotic impacts of climate from equatorial sites to polar regions.  He also runs an REU sites program (co-PI with Laurel Fox) at UC Santa Cruz each summer, and gives workshops on climate change science at institutions around the world.  He is also Director of the UC-wide Institute for the Study of the Ecological and Evolutionary Climate Impacts, a research consortium funded by a UC Presidential Research Catalyst Award.