Abstract

Topic: Climate impact

Impact of large environmental changes on Eurasian moose population since the Late Pleistocene

Magdalena Niedziałkowska¹, Marcin Górny¹, Joanna Gornia¹, Danijela Popović², Mateusz Baca², Maciej Sykut¹, Urszula Ratajczak-Skrzatek³, Oleksandr Kovalchuk³, Emilia Hofman-Kamińska¹, Rafał Kowalczyk¹, Paweł Mackiewicz⁴, Małgorzata Suska-Malawska⁵, Krzysztof Stefaniak³

Mammal Research Institute Polish Academy of Sciences, Białowieża, Poland
Centre of New Technologies, University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland
Department of Palaeozoology, University of Wrocław, Wrocław, Poland
Department of Bioinformatics and Genomics, University of Wrocław, Wrocław, Poland
Faculty of Biology, University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland

Climatic variables are among the most important factors limiting the distribution of different species on Earth. Large, cold-adapted mammals are particularly vulnerable to extinction as a result of climate warming. In our study, we investigated whether temperature increase after the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM, 26,000 - 19,000 BP) and environmental niche contraction during the Holocene were the main factors responsible for the range decline of the European moose (Alces alces). We analysed environmental conditions at the sites of 655 subfossil and modern moose occurrences over the last 50,000 years in Eurasia. We revealed that summer temperature has been the most limiting climatic factor for the distribution of the species since the Late Pleistocene. Almost all moose occurred in regions where the mean summer temperature was below 19°C, with July temperatures showing a more than three times narrower interquartile range than January temperatures. We detected significant differences in environmental conditions between the areas inhabited by European and Asian moose. In Europe, the species preferred regions with milder climates, higher primary productivity and more often in forest biomes compared to Asian individuals. During the Holocene climate warming in Europe, the range of the moose shifted more in a west-east direction than in a south-north direction. We concluded that although the area of suitable habitat for moose has increased since 12-8 ka BP, as shown by environmental niche modelling, the decline of A. alces in much of Europe was likely caused by anthropogenic landscape change (e.g. deforestation) and over-hunting by humans during the late Holocene, rather than by climate warming. However, more research is needed to answer the question of how the range of suitable areas for moose will change as the climate continues to warm, whether at least some populations (e.g. in central Europe) may be able to adapt to rising ambient temperatures. The study was funded by the National Science Centre in Poland (grant number UMO-2018/29/B/NZ8/01173).