Abstract
Climate change is rapidly altering the composition and availability of snow, with implications for snow-affected ecological processes, including reproduction, predation, habitat selection, and migration. How snowpack changes influence these ecological processes is mediated by physical snowpack properties, such as depth, density, hardness, and strength, each of which is in turn affected by climate change. Despite this, it remains difficult to obtain meaningful snow information relevant to the ecological processes of interest, precluding a mechanistic understanding of these effects. This problem is acute for species that rely on particular attributes of the subnivean space, for example depth, thermal resistance, and structural stability, for key life-history processes like reproduction, thermoregulation, and predation avoidance. We used a spatially explicit snow evolution model to investigate how habitat selection of a species that uses the subnivean space, the wolverine, is related to snow depth, snow density, and snow melt on Arctic tundra. We modeled these snow properties at a 10 m spatial and a daily temporal resolution for 3 years, and used integrated step selection analyses of GPS collar data from 21 wolverines to determine how these snow properties influenced habitat selection and movement. We found that wolverines selected deeper, denser snow, but only when it was not undergoing melt, bolstering the evidence that these snow properties are important to species that use the Arctic snowpack for subnivean resting sites and dens. We discuss the implications of these findings in the context of climate change impacts on subnivean species.
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Acknowledgements
We thank A. Magoun, as well as Iñupiat residents of Nuiqsut and Utqiaġvik, particularly Q. Harcharek, for early conversations that provided valuable context for this study. We thank J. Timm, J. Johnson, and the rest of the staff at Toolik Field Station, as well as M. Kynoch, R. Dorendorf, D. Schertz, C. Haddad, and S. Andersen with the Wildlife Conservation Society for logistical support in the field. M. Keech, P. Valkenburg, T. Laird, H. Chmura, M. Scrafford, and M. Barrueto generously aided fieldwork. We are grateful to L. Parrett and R. Klimstra with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, and to R. Kemnitz with the Bureau of Land Management for providing crucial fieldwork support at Umiat. We thank C. Parr and M. Sturm for snow data used to ground-truth our analysis. J. Eisaguirre provided valuable input regarding our analysis. This work was supported by the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust, Wilburforce Foundation, The Wolverine Foundation, a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship under Grant No. 1650114, and 69 generous individuals via a crowdfunding campaign.
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TWG and MDR conceived and designed the study. TWG conducted fieldwork and wrote the original manuscript draft. MDR and TWG obtained funding. MDR, KK, and GAB supervised the project and provided input on the study design. TWG and GAB analyzed the data and interpreted results. GEL and AKR provided snow modeling expertise. All authors reviewed and edited the manuscript.
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Communicated by Nicolas Lecomte.
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Glass, T.W., Breed, G.A., Liston, G.E. et al. Spatiotemporally variable snow properties drive habitat use of an Arctic mesopredator. Oecologia 195, 887–899 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-021-04890-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-021-04890-2