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NACCB 2012 St North Biology Americacongress Forconservation Society Biology Forconservation North America Section NACCB 2012 Abstracts 1st North America Congress for Conservation Biology Bridging the Gap: Connecting People, Nature, and Climate Society for Conservation Biology North America Section NACCB 2012 Society for Conservation Biology North America Section North America Congress for Conservation Biology Congress Abstracts Ordered by surname of first author. Author index at the end of the book. The Inaugural SCB North American Congress for Conservation Biology · Oakland, California · July 15-18, 2012 Monday, July 16 9:45 Can Brain Size Help using a novel application of multinomial logistic Predict Conservation Status Of Mammalian regression. The output of this method is a vector of Species? the relative probability of occupancy by each of a Abelson, Eric*, Stanford University set of vegetation types, for each pixel in the As global anthropogenic pressure on wildlife landscape. The overall vulnerability of vegetation mounts, conservationists are faced with finding to climate change can then be quantified as the salient characteristics that predict population change in modeled probabilities between the decline in mammals. Confounding the ability to vectors modeled under present versus future preserve mammalian species is the complexity of climates. These changes capture the likelihood of traits and behaviors that influence their ability to long-term climate-driven vegetation change for thrive in changing landscapes. While the brain is each pixel, without relying on specific predictions the seat of information processing, storage and the of present and future vegetation types. Based on origination of behaviors, the importance of neural this model, we find that the vegetation patches physiology to conservation is poorly understood. with greatest vulnerability to climate change are Encephalization (here defined as brain size those that lie close to the edge of the climate corrected for body size and phylogeny) has been suitability envelopes for their respective vegetation shown to be correlated with behavioral flexibility in types. In some cases, these climatically marginal birds as well as to predict the success of introduced populations occur on cool, north-facing slopes, mammals in novel habitats. However, the challenging the idea that cool micro-environments relationship between encephalization and will necessarily serve as in-situ refugia. For most of conservation status has not been applied directly the projected vegetation transitions, the new to understanding how mammals fare in a changing vegetation type predicted to occupy a site already world. I specifically describe how encephalization occurs within a short distance (< 5 km), so long- in mammalian species from the Americas relate to distance dispersal is not required. These results current trends in endangerment and also examine highlight the importance of fine-scale spatial the role that brain size has played in carnivore heterogeneity to provide local propagule sources persistence over the last 40 million years. These that will facilitate transitions among native results underscore the importance of incorporating vegetation types. encephalization into models predicting future faunal loss. Monday, July 16 Connecting Conservation, Maps, And People At USAID: New Applications Of Wednesday, July 18 9:30 Climate Change Geospatial Information Applied To Conservation Impacts On Vegetation In The San Francisco Bay And Development Area: A New Modeling Approach And Implications Adeney, Marion* For Conservation Geospatial information and analyses are critical Ackerly, David* tools long used by conservation scientists to inform Climate change is expected to profoundly impact our work. These tools illuminate natural terrestrial vegetation. Understanding spatial phenomena, changes resulting from interactions variability of these impacts is critical to between people and nature, and benefits people development of conservation strategies and receive from natural systems. The US Agency for projections of ecosystem services under future International Development (USAID) is increasing climates. We present a model of the projected both emphasis on the importance of nature responses of vegetation in the San Francisco Bay conservation for development results and on the Area to 21st century climate change scenarios, use of science, technology, and innovation to 1 The Inaugural SCB North American Congress for Conservation Biology · Oakland, California · July 15-18, 2012 inform development. As part of this effort, the important that scientific investigations benefit USAID GeoCenter, launched in November 2011, is from transdisciplinarity through collaborations working to build capacity for geospatial analysis between ecologists, modelers, veterinarians, public throughout the agency in areas from planning and health specialists and infectious disease biologists. strategy to evidence-based monitoring and We should focus on key host species and evaluation of our programs. Here, we show the pathogens in selected ecosystems (aquatic and example of the Regional Development Mission in terrestrial), and should include epidemiological Asia, which is using applied geospatial analyses to assessment, dynamic food-web modeling and inform mandatory assessments of the effectiveness experimental studies to develop adaptive of biodiversity and forestry programs and to aid in strategies on new disease transmission patterns in regional-scale strategic planning for climate change wildlife affecting domestic animals and humans. programming. We also discuss the advantages and challenges of applying these types of scientific tools in a large traditional development agency and discuss how the conservation community can best Monday, July 16 3:15 Life History Traits And contribute to and benefit from this effort. Range Shifts Interact To Determine Species' Vulnerability To Climate Change Akcakaya, H. Resit*, Stony Brook University , Aiello- Lammens, Matthew , Stanton, Jessica , Ryu, Hae Monday, July 16 9:00 Changing Patterns In Yeong , Shoemaker, Kevin , Horning, Ned , Ersts, Emerging Diseases Of Wildlife Linked To Climate Peter , Pearson, Richard Change Assessing the vulnerability of species to climate Aguirre, Alonso*, George Mason University change presents several challenges. Determining Changing patterns in emerging infectious diseases life history traits that make species vulnerable to of wildlife have been recently linked to climate extinction often leads to circularity in analysis change. These include changes in prevalence, when the data on extinction risk is based in part on abundance, hosts, geographic range, and wildlife these life history traits. Assessing the effect of host-pathogen interactions. We have observed range shifts in response to climate change often movement of West Nile virus, avian malaria and ignores life history and landscape-specific avian pox and other arboviruses to higher ranges information; and the results lack relevance to linked to warmer temperatures. Hantavirus in the extinction risk. To address these challenges, we Americas has been linked to changing drought and developed a novel modeling approach, which links rain patterns. Possible effects, that are harder to downscaled global climate model ensembles, predict, include invasions of new pathogens in a ecological niche models (ENM), and generic life large number of wildlife hosts. In addition, this may history models. We develop ENMs using a also affect the overall dynamics of aquatic and combination of dynamic climatic variables, and terrestrial ecosystems, Specific research priorities "static" variables such as land cover and hydrology. to predict impacts of climate change on wildlife The results of ENMs are linked to generic life diseases include collection of baseline data on history models, which are standardized stochastic health parameters, as well as distribution, models with upper and lower bounds for each of a epidemiology and effects of pathogens and standard set of life history parameters. These life diseases in wildlife; studies separating the effects history models are sampled with a Latin hypercube of different climate variables on the dynamics of design and each sampled model is linked with pathogens and disease in animals and humans; and results of an ENM to form stochastic forecasting temporal and spatial effects of climate metapopulation models with dynamic spatial change on pathogen and host populations. It is structure. Analysis of simulation results reveals 2 The Inaugural SCB North American Congress for Conservation Biology · Oakland, California · July 15-18, 2012 interacting effects of life history changes and range Monday, July 16 Effect Of Farming Method On shifts on the vulnerability of species to climate Arbuscular Mycorrhiza Formation In Two Coffee change. This approach is demonstrated by using Growing Regions Of Costa Rica distributional and demographic data on 40 species Aldrich-Wolfe, Laura*, Concordia College Biology of North American reptiles and amphibians to Department , Schmaltz, Logan, Concordia College analyze their vulnerability to climate change. Biology Department , Mcglynn, Riley, Concordia College Biology Department Coffee (Coffea arabica) is one of many plant species that form mutualistic associations with Wednesday, July 18 10:15 Bridging The Gap: arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi in which the plants Walking The Talk exchange sugars from photosynthesis for enhanced * Albright, Whitney , Pairis, Amber , Choudhury, uptake of phosphorus and other poorly mobile soil Arpita nutrients and protection
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