A brief history of Great Basin pikas

Abstract

Aim Within the past few decades, seven of the 25 historically described populations of American pikas (Ochotona princeps) in the Great Basin of arid western North America appear to have become extinct. In this paper, the prehistoric record for pikas in the Great Basin is used to place these losses in deeper historical context. Location The Great Basin, or area of internal drainage, of the western United States. Methods The location, elevation, and age of all reported prehistoric Great Basin specimens of American pikas were extracted from the literature. Elevations of extinct pika populations were arrayed through time, and latitudes and longitudes of those populations used to determine changing distances of those populations from the nearest extant populations. Results The average elevation of now‐extinct Great Basin pika populations during the late Wisconsinan (c. 40,000–10,000 radiocarbon years ago) and early Holocene (c. 10,000–7500 years ago) was 1750 m. During the hot and dry middle Holocene (c. 7500–4500 years ago), the average elevation of these populations rose 435 m, to 2168 m. All prehistorically known late Holocene (c. 4500–200 years ago) populations in the Great Basin are from mountain ranges that currently support populations of this animal, but historic period losses have caused the average elevation of pika populations to rise an additional 152 m. The total elevational increase, from the late Wisconsinan and early Holocene to today, has been 783 m. As lower elevation pika populations were lost, their distribution increasingly came to resemble its modern form. During the late Wisconsinan, now‐extinct pika populations were located an average of 170 km from the nearest extant population. By the late Holocene, this distance had declined to 30 km. Main conclusions Prehistoric alterations in the distribution of pika population in the Great Basin were driven by climate change and attendant impacts on vegetation. Today, Great Basin pikas contend with both climate change and anthropogenic impacts and thus may be on the brink of extinction.

Ambient Temperature Influences Diet Selection and Physiology of an Herbivorous Mammal, Neotoma albigula

“…Recent work on the North American pika (Ochotona princeps), a small herbivorous lagomorph, suggests that some mammalian herbivores may already be experiencing the effects of global warming (Beever et al 2003;Grayson 2005). A resurvey of 25 populations of the North American pika across the Great Basin indicated that 28% of the original populations surveyed within the past 100 yr were locally extinct (Beever et al 2003).…”

On the generality of a climate-mediated shift in the distribution of the American pika (Ochotona princeps)

“…American pikas have become a bellwether species for alpine taxa in peril (Krajick 2004), partly because they are conspicuous, charismatic denizens of alpine communities, and partly because population declines have been attributed to climatic changes (Beever et al 2003, 2010, Grayson 2005. Distributional shifts and population extirpations in the Great Basin and Sierra Nevada have been linked to recent climatic trends (Beever et al 2003, 2010, Moritz et al 2008 as well as climate change over the last glacial-interglacial period (Grayson 2005).…”

“…Distributional shifts and population extirpations in the Great Basin and Sierra Nevada have been linked to recent climatic trends (Beever et al 2003, 2010, Moritz et al 2008 as well as climate change over the last glacial-interglacial period (Grayson 2005).…”

Are American Pikas (<em>Ochotona princeps</em>) in the Canadian Rockies vulnerable to climate change?

“…Concerns over the effects of climate change on pikas arise from several sources including observations of population disappearance (Beever et al 2003(Beever et al , 2011stewart et al 2015), elevational retreat (Beever et al 2003(Beever et al , 2011Grayson 2005;Millar and Westfall 2010), susceptibility to acute (MacArthur and Wang 1974;smith 1974a) and chronic heat stress (Beever et al 2010;Wilkening et al 2011;stewart et al 2015), increasing frequency of low precipitation and snowpack (erb et al 2011;Beever et al 2013;Jeffress et al 2013), limited dispersal ability (seppänen et al 2012;Beever and smith 2013), restriction to areas of permafrost (hafner 1993, 1994Millar and Westfall 2010;Wilkening et al 2015), dependence on higher elevations (Rodhouse et al 2010), and habitat change (CoseWiC 2011).…”