Laura Prugh, Professor of Wildlife Ecology at the University of Washington, is visiting Utah State University this week to give two seminars for the Ecology Center.
Prugh studies interactions among wildlife species in North America, with a current focus on how snow conditions shape the movements of wild animals on the landscape.
“What we've found in terms of predator prey interactions — deep, fluffy snow tends to favor predators because they have big paws," Prugh said. "They're lighter in weight, so they can just run on top of the snow when it's a lot fluffier than a deer or an elk or a moose."
Next, Prugh used meteorological data and statistical models to predict the effects of climate change on future snow conditions.
“As you might expect, in the future, there will just be a lot less snow, because a lot more precipitation is going to fall as rain instead of snow," Prugh said. "So, our research is indicating that in the future, it might be quite a bit harder for predators to successfully hunt ungulates in the winter.”
To study how different species navigate snow, Prugh and her team measured snow depth and density around Washington and overlaid the map with radio collar data from wolves, mountain lions, coyotes, and bobcats.
“You know, coyotes tend to select for shallower, denser snow when given the choice. But what we found was, when there were wolves nearby, coyotes shifted their selection for deeper, fluffier snow," Prugh said. "Because even though, generally, they don't do particularly well in those conditions, they do better than wolves.”
Understanding how predators interact with each other, not just with prey species, is key to understanding an ecosystem, Prugh said.
“Sometimes it can make you want to just throw up your hands and say, like, ‘well, everything is so complex, why bother trying to understand this?’" Prugh said. "But most of the time, I actually find that to be a motivating challenge. It makes me even more want to try to tease apart all those complexities, because I think we need to keep trying to understand what's going on at that level to make good conservation and management decisions.”
Prugh is giving talks on the USU campus both Wednesday and Thursday of this week.
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