EAR PF CLARIFYING MAMMALIAN RESPONSES TO ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE: IMPROVING NICHE MODELING THROUGH THE INTEGRATION OF CLIMATE AND DIETARY INFORMATION

Pardi Melissa I, Albuquerque NM

Investigators

Abstract

Dr. Melissa I. Pardi has been granted an NSF EAR Postdoctoral Fellowship to carry out research and education plans at Vanderbilt University. This study examines long-term evolutionary responses of mammals and communities to environmental changes in aridity during the last 35,000 years in North America. The study uses oxygen isotope data from fossil tooth enamel to produce climate reconstructions to model species distribution and integrated stable isotope analysis and dental microwear texture to gain an understanding of how species respond to variability in aridity. Dr. Pardi is engaging high school and undergraduate students in research. Dr. Pardi is also designing teaching modules for middle school students and working with her mentor on outreach programs to the Tennessee School for the Blind working with small groups of students on science activities. Taken together, modern and paleoecological perspectives inform on the expected responses of biota to aridity over time. Dr. Pardi's project unites three separate tools to understand various aspects of both modern and ancient ecological systems and the merging of these tools is a novel approach to understand species dynamics. Models have been used to project distributions of species under future scenarios of aridity, but their inability to predict past distributions using the fossil record causes concern about reliability for predictions. This project is improving the data for the models and investigating whether dietary shifts in the fossil record can explain the mismatch between observed and predicted occurrences in species distribution models. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.