American Pika

Katie Solari a first year graduate student at Stanford University and Lily Li research assistant at Stanford University

Dear Scifund Supporters,

Thanks to your donations we are moving forward with our Great Basin lagomorph (hare, rabbit and pika) research. We have not been back out into the field yet, but we have been extracting and sequencing DNA from pellets collected over the last few years. We also currently have in the lab the American Museum of Natural History’s collection of Lagomorph bones dating back 7000 years! We have been approved to extract DNA from a select number of teeth and have been successfully sequencing DNA from different rabbit and hare species from the last few thousand years. The combination of the modern genetic data from the pellets and the ancient genetic data from the teeth will allow us to track how lagomorph species genetic diversity has been changing though time. In the next steps of this project we would like to see if any correlations can be drawn between the timing of changes in their distribution and/or genetic diversity and changes in climate. Visualizing how these species’ ranges and genetic diversity was effected by past climate changes will allow us to predict how they may be effected by future climate change and allow us the foresight to structure management plans that will be most effective in their conservation.

Katie and Lily