UC Berkeley

All over the world, species are shifting their geographic distributions in response to climate change. We know from studies of other range expansion and contraction scenarios—like those driven by species invasions or by the end of the last Ice Age—that they affect ecological interactions and the evolutionary trajectories of species. The impacts of range expansions and contractions driven specifically by contemporary climate change, though, are still profoundly uncertain. Understanding these ecological and evolutionary impacts will be important for biodiversity conservation and management under rapid global change. To address this critical knowledge gap, I combine fieldwork, molecular work, and analyses of population genetics and disease ecology over the course of three dissertation chapters. My research illuminates how the whole genome diversity, genetic adaptation, and infection dynamics of a host species were affected by its climate-driven range expansion. Specifically, my dissertation examines the expansion of the Marbled four-eyed frog (Pleurodema marmoratum) into upslope, mountain pass habitat that deglaciated over the last 150 years in the Cordillera Vilcanota, Peru.