National Park Service U.S. Department of the Interior Natural Resource Program Center A Re-survey of the Historic Grinnell-Storer Vertebrate Transect through Yosemite National Park, California Natural Resource Technical Report NPS/SIEN/NRTR—2011/439 ON THE COVER Clockwise from upper left: Joseph Grinnell at Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, University of California, Berkeley; Joseph Grinnell preparing a specimen (historic photos courtesy of The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley); Jim Patton weighing a deer mouse (Peromyscus maniculatus); and alpine chipmunk (Tamias alpinus) (modern photos courtesy of Leslie Chow). A Re-survey of the Historic Grinnell-Storer Vertebrate Transect through Yosemite National Park, California Natural Resource Technical Report NPS/SIEN/NRTR—2011/439 Craig Moritz1,2 James L. Patton1,2 Christopher J. Conroy1 Adam Leache1,2 Andrew Rush1,2 Steven R. Beissinger1,3 1Museum of Vertebrate Zoology 2Department of Integrative Biology 3Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management University of California Berkeley, CA 94720 March 2011 U.S. Department of the Interior National Park Service Natural Resource Program Center Fort Collins, Colorado The National Park Service, Natural Resource Program Center publishes a range of reports that address natural resource topics of interest and applicability to a broad audience in the National Park Service and others in natural resource management, including scientists, conservation and environmental constituencies, and the public. The Natural Resource Technical Report Series is used to disseminate results of scientific studies in the physical, biological, and social sciences for both the advancement of science and the achievement of the National Park Service mission. The series provides contributors with a forum for displaying comprehensive data that are often deleted from journals because of page limitations. All manuscripts in the series receive the appropriate level of peer review to ensure that the information is scientifically credible, technically accurate, appropriately written for the intended audience, and designed and published in a professional manner. This report received informal peer review by subject-matter experts who were not directly involved in the collection, analysis, or reporting of the data. Views, statements, findings, conclusions, recommendations, and data in this report do not necessarily reflect views and policies of the National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior. Mention of trade names or commercial products does not constitute endorsement or recommendation for use by the U.S. Government. This report is available from the Sierra Nevada Network (http://science.nature.nps.gov/im/units/sien/) and the Natural Resource Publications Management website (http://www.nature.nps.gov/publications/nrpm/). Please cite this publication as: Moritz, C., J. L. Patton, C. J. Conroy, A. Leache, A. Rush, and S. R. Beissinger. 2011. A re- survey of the Grinnell-Storer vertebrate transect through Yosemite National Park, California. Natural Resource Technical Report NPS/SIEN/NRTR—2011/439. National Park Service, Fort Collins, Colorado. NPS 104/106993, March 2011 ii Contents Page Figures............................................................................................................................................. v Tables ............................................................................................................................................ vii Appendixes .................................................................................................................................... ix Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... xi Acknowledgments........................................................................................................................ xiii Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 1 Methods........................................................................................................................................... 7 Methodological Caveats .......................................................................................................... 9 Mammals ............................................................................................................................... 11 Data Collection ................................................................................................................. 11 Data Aggregation.............................................................................................................. 11 Amphibians and Reptiles ....................................................................................................... 14 Birds ....................................................................................................................................... 14 Transect and Site Comparisons ........................................................................................ 18 Species Richness and Turnover ........................................................................................ 19 Species-level Change ........................................................................................................ 19 Cluster Analysis ................................................................................................................ 20 Results ........................................................................................................................................... 21 Overview ................................................................................................................................ 21 Mammals ............................................................................................................................... 21 Priority Species ................................................................................................................. 23 Expanded Ranges .............................................................................................................. 24 Recently Rare Species ....................................................................................................... 25 iii Contents (continued) Page Shifts in Elevational Range ............................................................................................... 27 Reptiles and Amphibians ....................................................................................................... 33 Birds ....................................................................................................................................... 34 Number of Observations and Species ............................................................................... 34 Species Richness and Turnover ........................................................................................ 36 Species Level Change ....................................................................................................... 39 Habitat Associations and Change ..................................................................................... 40 Conclusions and Prospectus .......................................................................................................... 43 Literature Cited ............................................................................................................................. 47 iv Figures Page Figure 1. The Grinnell Yosemite Transect (red rectangle) across the central Sierra Nevada. ........................................................................................................................................... 2 Figure 2. Examples of survey documents and images. .................................................................. 8 Figure 3. Map of individual trap sites in upper Lyell Canyon from the fieldnotes of Charles Camp, July 1915. ............................................................................................................. 10 Figure 4. Trapline aggregates for the historic (1914–1915) and modern (2003–2006) sampling eras. ............................................................................................................................... 12 Figure 5. Transect survey for avian species point-counts in 2003 (upper) and 2004 (lower). .......................................................................................................................................... 17 Figure 6. Range (elevation) expansion of the Piñon mouse, Peromyscus truei, on both the western and eastern slopes of the Sierra Nevada into Yosemite National Park. .............................................................................................................................................. 22 Figure 7. Locality records for the Lyell shrew, Sorex lyelli, from the Yosemite region based on the original 1914–1915 Grinnell surveys (orange circles) and the 2003–2008 resurveys (yellow triangles). ......................................................................................................... 23 Figure 8. Locality records for the heather vole, Phenacomys intermedius, from the Yosemite region based on the original 1914–1915 Grinnell surveys (orange circles) and the 2003–2008 resurveys (yellow triangles). ......................................................................... 24 Figure 9. Locality records