Mar 8, 2021
Q&A with Lucas Moyer-Horner, ecologist and pika expert
Lucas Moyer-Horner is a community and population ecologist, with his research focused on the American pika. While receiving his Ph.D. in zoology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, he studied how climate change is affecting pika behavior and how pika populations are restricted by their environment. He is now an associate instructor of biology at the University of Utah. I spoke with him over the phone about the threats climate change poses to the American pika, and he explored his opinions on pika’s intrinsic value and the controversial denial of the Fish and Wildlife Service in listing the pika as protected. He ended on an optimistic note, offering lots of things we can do to help the pika.
Q: How big a threat is climate change to pikas?
A: That’s a tough question. I’d say over the long term it’s a very large threat.
Q: What specifically poses the greatest threat, whether it be heat or foraging or winter temperatures?
A: Well the current evidence is that it’s probably a combination of those three. One of the neat things about pikas is their habitat is fairly well protected so unlike a lot of species they’re not threatened so much by habitat loss by humans, but climate change itself will change their habitat and their environment. So day time temperatures are going to be a problem. Night time temperatures are going to be a problem. Changes in vegetation patterns, changes in tree line and changes in snowpack are all going to be issues for them.
Q: Do they also face a risk when it comes to dispersal and having limited genetic flow?
A: Yes, definitely. Pikas are pretty poor dispersers and so that is going to amplify the impacts of climate change.
Q: Where specifically are pikas disappearing from the most?
A: Well there’s quite a bit of evidence of some disappearances in the Great Basin. There’s also some evidence in the Sierra Nevadas and there’s evidence of disappearances from southern ends of their range, places like New Mexico and southern Utah.
Q: Is it only elevation that impacts this?
A: No, not just elevation. For instance in the Great Basin the height of the mountain range that you’re looking at matters, because in essence if it’s a short mountain, pikas wont have as much available elevation to move up as temperatures warm. So elevation is certainly a factor, but I think temperature has been a lot of strong predictors both during the summer and the winter. Moisture is probably a factor. It’s a complex combination of factors that I think drive extirpations in certain sites.
Q: Are pikas adapting at all?
A: In an evolutionary sense there hasn’t been enough time for adaptation in terms of changes in allele frequencies in the populations. We’re just talking about modern climate change in the last few decades really. But in terms of behavioral flexibility or plasticity is a term that’s often used, they’re mammals and so they have a suite of behaviors that they can adapt in different environmental situations. For example pikas can increase their nighttime foraging and there’s a few anecdotal bits of evidence of them doing that. Whether or not that’s increasing we don’t know, but it has been seen, or more accurately heard, pikas being a bit active at night. Some of my research has looked at body size and fur properties as being really important in pika’s ability to dissipate heat, so it is possible that there’s some plasticity in body size and fur properties that exist in pika populations that hasn’t been very well studied. But if potentially there was enough range in body size and smaller body size and shorter fur then that could be selected for moving forward. There’s some adaptability that pikas have in terms of their behavior and when they forage, but sort of overall are pikas adapting to warmer temperatures? We don’t really have much direct evidence that they are changing their behaviors, other than foraging less during the day when it’s hot, we know that they do that.
Q: Why are the pikas important? What would the world look like without them?
A: Well that’s a value judgement. Different people are going to value species in different ways. I think each species is valuable in its own right and its own right to exist and contribute to the beauty and complexity of the planet. It’s also a piece of a complex web of species in a community of plants and animals and bacteria and part of an ecosystem. The removal from those systems will have unforeseen consequences, plus they’re cute and charismatic and people get excited about them, so to the extent that they can increase people’s feelings of connection to nature or excitement about getting outside, losing them we lose that as well. It’s pretty incalculable a loss of pikas or really any species in my opinion.
Q: Do you believe they should be listed on the Endangered Species Act?
A: Well, that’s a really complex political process that I’m not particularly plugged into. I believe the Fish and Wildlife Service should use the best evidence available. To list a species as being threatened solely by climate change and really nothing else I believe would be a novel thing for the Fish and Wildlife Service, so I can understand their reluctance and also given fairly widespread populations and overall population sizes that are fairly large, I can see their reluctance there as well. But there’s also evidence that pikas are facing the threat of climate change and populations are declining in some places and they don’t have many options in terms of places to go because of dispersal as you mentioned, because of their habitat being so particular and limited, and so I think it’s a tough sort of philosophical decision for the Fish and Wildlife Service. Do we want to list a species as endangered because we think it is likely that their numbers will drop significantly in the future? I can see it being potentially a slippery slope for them politically, because there are probably a lot of species that would be in similar situations.
Q: What are some ways we can help the pika?
A: Pikas being furry and pretty cute, they can get some support for things like citizen science programs, plus they are quite detectable so relatively minimal training is needed to be able to do some sort of rudimentary surveys of pika habitats. There are citizen science projects all over the mountain west, so if somebody was really interested in participating in science and monitoring pikas they could get involved in a citizen science pika project. Then there’s also just contributing funding to pika science, to fighting climate change, to continue to protect and set aside protected areas. All of those things are important for helping pikas.
Theres a variety of things you can do to help the pika, such as volunteering for the citizen science Front Range Pika Project, funding projects that help the pika and keeping a low carbon footprint so as to not exacerbate the effects of climate change.
