Warren Paul Porter, Ph.D. - US grants

Current attempts to study life history evolution have begun to focus on multiple causality: demography, behavior, physiology, biophysics, and ecology all interact to shape life history phenotypes. Emphasis has been placed on evaluating energetic, behavioral, and environmental factors, within a demographic context, in an attempt to generate testable predictions from life history theories. Accordingly, the effects of different soil moisture potentials and temperatures on hatchability, hatchling size (mass and length), and development time in the iguanid lizard, Sceloporus merriami will be evaluated. This will be integrated with the particular pattern of female territoriality and home range use seen in these animals. Females aggressively defend their territories from males and other females, while males direct their defense against other males. Yet for either sex, territories appear to be inherited en bloc. Furthermore, specific territories are "hot spots", where the inhabitants invariably live far longer than the average cohort generation time. Additionally, both large males and large females have more eggs and larger males tend to control more females. Factors affecting size should, then, be important. This integrated approach allows behavior (territoriality), physiology and biophysics (egg requirements), and demography, to be evaluated in an integrated manner with regard to lifetime reproductive success. Any attempt to evaluate minimum areas required to maintain breeding populations of reptiles needs to employ the above multiple causality approach. Such considerations are becoming pivotal to conservation attempts to maintain and restock rare or valuable species. In a very extreme conservation measure, data generated by the above approach can be used to captive-breed decimated populations to use as seed stock in the wild.

The research proposed will focus on a mechanistic model for understanding simultaneous heat and water fluxes in porous media such as fur, feathers or grasses or crops in outdoor environments. Understanding heat and water fluxes is important because they are a critical part of an animal's capacity to grow and reproduce. Without a mechanistic understanding of these fluxes, empirical measurements must be made for each new situation. This work is important because it will lead to understanding animal population and community dynamics and to understanding the influences of multiple low level stresses, such as climate, disease and toxicants on those dynamics. It also provides a fundamental basis for developing general microclimate models for grasses and crops, which are "home" (constitute the microenvironments) for small vertebrates and invertebrates. Results from this research can also be applied to: 1) assessment of impact of climate change on animal growth and reproduction potential; 2) assessment of genetic engineering of changes in animal allometry of fur properties as it affects feed efficiency for production of milk or meat; 3) assessment of different, more energy efficient domestic animal housing in different climates; 4) understanding aspects of the limits to animal distributions and how they might change for different climate change scenarios; 5) assessment of the impact of infectious diseases and low level toxicants on capacity of animals to grow and reproduce in different environments.

Animals interact with their local environment in ways that determine their reproductive success and survival. By looking at how climate, topography, and vegetation interact with the physical properties of the animal, including its metabolic rate and heat gain and loss, a basic model can be developed. The current model uses global climate data, digital elevation maps, vegetation maps and animal properties to calculate available microclimates, animal energetics, behavior, activity patterns, food web structure, community structure and potential for and food-borne pathogen and pesticide exposure. New work will extend the model's availability by providing a graphical user interface and web accessibility, as well as by extending the database of information on animal reflectivity and morphology.

The model can be applied to a wide range of questions from the appropriateness of environments for relocating endangered species to the impact of climate change on animal population dynamics and environmental impacts of pesticide spraying or forest burns or other management activities. Informed decision making is improved and a wide range of collaborators and students help to spread the use of the

This project will develop a bioinformatics computational platform that crosses the disciplinary boundaries of art and science. It connects 3-D object animation with computational fluid dynamics, heat and mass transfer engineering, morphology, physiology, behavior, ecology, evolution, earth sciences, remote-sensing and GIS technologies. This research addresses the question: "What has been/is/will be the role of climate, topography and plant environments in defining animal body sizes, shapes and distributions in the geological past, the present and future?" This work will include the use of state-of-the-art mechanistic models of global and local environments and selected terrestrial and marine vertebrates and invertebrates. The approach is very cross disciplinary involving genetics, biochemistry, and engineering/physics-based heat, mass and momentum transfer models of animals in terrestrial and marine environments. The investigators will be modeling mobile animals that can select their local physical environments on an hourly basis throughout the year and for multiple years to define growth potential, reproductive potential and distribution limits. The results of this project will generate computational and database resources and tools for scientific research, high school and college student instruction and interactive lay public access to computer explorations of how ancient, modern and future environments have altered, or will alter how and where species can successfully exist on earth. This research will develop resources useful to governmental regulatory agencies, university and NGO scientists as well as policy specialists, and will lead to advances in understanding the biophysics, energetics, behavior, ecology and evolution of animals. This work will create opportunities to pique the curiosity of young students and the lay public, and create a virtual environment where they can explore the constraints that define the kinds of animals that can successfully survive, grow and reproduce in local environments. These computer resources will be developed and made available on a website accessible via http://www.zoology.wisc.edu/faculty/Por/Por.html.

This award will provide funds to study a poorly known environment below the snowpack known as the subnivium. To escape the harsh winter weather, many plants and animals persist within a warmer and more stable environment underneath the snowpack. The climate of the subnivium is dependent on snowpack depth, density and duration; deep, soft snow provides excellent insulation that results in mild subnivium temperatures. Within the Great Lakes Region, the subnivium is historically important, but winter conditions are changing rapidly. By 2050, mean winter temperature is predicted to be 3-4 degrees Centigrade warmer resulting in a shorter snowcover season and shallower and denser snowpack. These changes will produce a colder and more thermally variable subnivium. For species that are specially adapted to survive winter in the subnivium, such changes could effect their survival and distribution. To determine how climate change will affect the conditions and distribution of this sensitive habitat, this award will experimentally mimic climate change predicted by 2050 across the Great Lakes Region using micro-greenhouses. Finally, laboratory experiments and distribution modeling will reveal how future subnivium conditions will affect the physiology, survival and distribution of a sensitive subnivium hibernating amphibian species native to the Great Lakes Region.

This project will provide new information on the mechanisms and extent to which climate change will affect various attributes of the subnivium a biologically important and climatically sensitive seasonal refugium. It will assess how changing snow conditions will alter the survival and physiological function of a hibernating amphibian and predict their future distribution in warming winters. This project will also provide professional development opportunities for graduate and undergraduate students through interactions with partners at the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, Michigan Tech University, and The Wildlife Society's Climate Change Working Group. Micro-greenhouses will be constructed by participants at Operation Fresh Start, a local youth development program, and will provide opportunities for underrepresented, at-risk and minority youth to interact with university faculty, researchers and students. Finally, the placement of micro-greenhouses at state parks, and recreational areas will serve as an important tool for climate change education and provide potentially long-term research opportunities.