Pika featured on NatGeo

Our research was featured on the Years of Living Dangerously series on the National Geographic Channel. Here I am with the pika and Aasif Mandvi.

 

Erratum: When I interact with the media I do my best to convey the research accurately and hope for the best from the editing process. Here are a few small erratum/clarifications from this scene:

  • The scene cuts from me mentioning pika short calls, to me imitating long calls, then to pika footage from Colorado.
  • It is indeed legal to hunt pikas in some places such as Alaska. To my knowledge this practice is rare. Hunting is not an appreciable contributor to pika declines.
  • I misspoke somewhat when I said, “in Yosemite more than half of the small mammals they looked at were disappearing from low elevation sites.” I should have said “more than half of the small mammals they looked at were shifting their distribution upslope.” Moritz et al 2008 found that 57% of species (16/28) they looked at shifted their distribution upslope significantly (p < 0.05) either through lower elevation range contraction or upslope range expansion.