Effects of a range-shifting caddisfly on life histories of a top predator in high elevation ponds

Abstract

Climate change is creating the opportunity for various species to undertake range expansion, both geographically and elevationally. There has been relatively little research into the ecological effects of these climate-driven range expansions on predators, particularly when the new species to a community fills a phenological gap in prey. The opportunity to learn more about these effects comes in a recent range expansion of a caddisfly species, Nemotaulius hostilis, into a well-studied, high elevation pond complex. I explored how this new species might be influencing the growth and life history of a top keystone predator, paedomorphic tiger salamanders. Using mark and recapture and comparing current collected data to that collected before N. hostilis was abundant, I tested how abundance of a new prey source is affecting salamander ecology. By understanding how a range extension influences top predators, we can gain insight into the direct and indirect effects of climate change on aquatic ecosystems.

Local Knowledge Graph (12 entities)

Related Works

Items connected by shared entities, co-authorship, citations, or semantic similarity.

References (18)

5 in Knowledge Hub, 13 external