Here’s a nice video I stumbled upon about Lisa Aubry’s group’s work at Utah State Uni.

Climate change is having a positive effect on uinta ground squirrels, allowing them to fatten-up and attain weights higher than those recorded historically. This population is survival limited, and survival probability is higher the fatter the squirrels are, so abundance responds positively to this climate change.

I can’t handle how cute those squirrels are 🙂

I wonder what will happen to the rest of the ecosystem as a result of trophic interactions and other effects of increased squirrel abundance? Maybe, if a basic description of the food web is available (species interactions and signs), some of the qualitative modelling methods I’ve been looking at (a modification of Raymond et al. 2011) could be used, by exploring increased squirrel abundance as a positive press perturbation?