Cumulative effects of climate and landscape change drive spatial distribution of Rocky Mountain wolverine (Gulo gulo L.).

ABSTRACT: Contemporary landscapes are subject to a multitude of human-derived stressors. Effects of such stressors are increasingly realized by population declines and large-scale extirpation of taxa worldwide. Most notably, cumulative effects of climate and landscape change can limit species' local adaptation and dispersal capabilities, thereby reducing realized niche space and range extent. Resolving the cumulative effects of multiple stressors on species persistence is a pressing challenge in ecology, especially for declining species. For example, wolverines (Gulo gulo L.) persist on only 40% of their historic North American range. While climate change has been shown to be a mechanism of range retractions, anthropogenic landscape disturbance has been recently implicated. We hypothesized th

SUBMITTER: Heim N 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5677488 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature