Short Title: Climate and pop variability

PI: Tad Dallas (University of South Carolina)

Co-PI: Lauren Shoemaker (University of Wyoming)

Environmental conditions play a key role in shaping ecological patterns, from species diversity to the variability in species abundances through time. As such, it stands to reason that climate-change driven impacts to temperature and precipitation patterns will fundamentally alter our ecosystems. However, species have developed a multitude of mechanisms that help them cope with environmental variability. As such, how current and future climate change will impact ecological variability remains an open question, critical for predicting species extinction risk, biomass production, and ecosystem stability. A highly interdisciplinary and diverse team with expertise in ecology, modeling, computer science, and climate science will tackle these questions through synthesis of big data across climates and taxa, ranging from fish to beetles to small mammals.