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While the traditional goals of undergraduate courses are often content-based, the development of career-readiness and professional skills, such as those listed by the National Association of Colleges and Employers, are increasingly recognized as important learning outcomes. As Mammalogy courses embrace more hands-on learning activities, they provide the opportunity to embed these professional skills, which are directly relevant to many careers in science. For example, many Mammalogy courses may include projects that incorporate experimental design and data analysis that focus on quantitative literacy, in addition to technical skills including small mammal trapping and handling, or preparing voucher specimens, that focus on problem-solving and attention to detail. Here, we review the professional skills that can be developed through a Mammalogy course and evaluate evidence-based approaches to build those skills into our courses. One approach, using Course-based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CUREs), provides opportunities for both student skill development and instructor research program development. Because they invite students to participate in authentic scientific inquiry—from study design and data collection, to analysis and reporting of results—students participating in CUREs reported significant gains in their comfort with several important professional skills, including conducting field procedures, formulating and analyzing data, normalizing failure, and attempting new procedures on their own. Finally, we review the literature to demonstrate how active learning approaches inherent in CUREs can help students to build familiarity with technologies and techniques for collecting and assessing data from wild mammal populations, as well as to build important professional skills such as teamwork, leadership, problem-solving, and written and oral communication.

Of the primary responses to contemporary climate change – “move, adapt, acclimate, or die” – that are available to organisms, “acclimate” may be effectively achieved through behavioral modification. Behavioral flexibility allows animals to rapidly cope with changing environmental conditions, and behavior represents an important component of a species’ adaptive capacity in the face of climate change. However, there is currently a lack of knowledge about the limits or constraints on behavioral responses to changing conditions. Here, we characterize the contexts in which organisms respond to climate variability through behavior. First, we quantify patterns in behavioral responses across taxa with respect to timescales, climatic stimuli, life-history traits, and ecology. Next, we identify existing knowledge gaps, research biases, and other challenges. Finally, we discuss how conservation practitioners and resource managers can incorporate an improved understanding of behavioral flexibility into natural resource management and policy decisions.

Gut microbial communities provide many physiological functions to their hosts, especially in herbivorous animals. We still lack an understanding of how these microbial communities are structured across hosts in nature, especially within a given host species. Studies on laboratory mice have demonstrated that host genetics can influence microbial community structure, but that diet can overwhelm these genetic effects. We aimed to test these ideas in a natural system, the American pika (Ochotona princeps). First, pikas are high-elevation specialists with significant population structure across various mountain ranges in the USA, allowing us to investigate whether similarities in microbial communities match host genetic differences. Additionally, pikas are herbivorous, with some populations exhibiting remarkable dietary plasticity and consuming high levels of moss, which is exceptionally high in fibre and low in protein. This allows us to investigate adaptations to an herbivorous diet, as well as to the especially challenging diet of moss. Here, we inventoried the microbial communities of pika caecal pellets from various populations using 16S rRNA sequencing to investigate structuring of microbial communities across various populations with different natural diets. Microbial communities varied significantly across populations, and differences in microbial community structure were congruent with genetic differences in host population structure, a pattern known as "phylosymbiosis." Several microbial members (Ruminococcus, Prevotella, Oxalobacter and Coprococcus) were detected across all samples, and thus likely represent a "core microbiome." These genera are known to perform a number of services for herbivorous hosts such as fibre fermentation and the degradation of plant defensive compounds, and thus are likely important for herbivory in pikas. Moreover, pikas that feed on moss harboured microbial communities highly enriched in Melainabacteria. This uncultivable candidate phylum has been proposed to ferment fibre for herbivores, and thus may contribute to the ability of some pika populations to consume high amounts of moss. These findings demonstrate that both host genetics and diet can influence the microbial communities of the American pika. These animals may be novel sources of fibre-degrading microbes. Last, we discuss the implications of population-specific microbial communities for conservation efforts in this species.

Range contractions in the Great Basin over the last century suggest that American pikas (Ochotona princeps) might be highly sensitive to climate change. However, documentation of pikas residing at relatively warm, low-elevation sites has recently shed new light on the possible resilience of pika populations to warmer ambient conditions when they have access to cooler microhabitats for thermoregulation. To provide insight into the possible behavioral mechanisms of adaptation to warmer habitats, we investigated activity patterns, foraging behavior, and space use of a population of pikas living in an atypical, warmer habitat at Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve, an extensive lava flow surrounded by high desert grassland and sagebrush communities in southern Idaho. We compared pika behavior at this site to that of a population in a more typical alpine habitat at Grays Peak in the nearby Pioneer Mountains in Idaho. Specifically, we evaluated and compared activity patterns and foraging behavior of pikas in relation to temperature, time of day, and month. Pikas at Craters of the Moon were less active aboveground during all times of the day from late May until mid-August, compared to those at Grays Peak. Surface temperatures were warmer across the entire season at Craters of the Moon than at Grays Peak, and pikas exhibited a crepuscular activity pattern that coincided with variations in surface temperature at Craters of the Moon. Pikas were the least active during the midday, when the surface temperatures were highest and the insulating effect of the lava tubes (i.e., the difference between surface and crevice temperatures) was most pronounced. Pikas at Craters of the Moon spent less time haying and displayed fewer territorial behaviors than pikas at Grays Peak, but both groups filled a similar number of hay piles. The vegetation community was less diverse and sparser at Craters of the Moon than at Grays Peak, and consequently, the vegetation that was consumed and cached reflected these differences. Our results expand the body of literature about American pikas at their environmental limits, and this study is the first step in identifying the unique suite of behaviors that pikas use to persist in a seemingly inhospitable environment at Craters of the Moon.

Mammalian habitat specialists are suffering notable population declines and localized extinctions in response to climate change. Plastic behavioral responses, especially in foraging, may be critical for specialists to tolerate changes in temperature, precipitation, and resource availability. Here, we investigate the foraging behavior of a mammalian alpine specialist living in atypical habitat. American pikas (Ochotona princeps) are typically limited to high elevations in western North America; however, they persist near sea level in the Columbia River Gorge, well outside their previously assumed climatic niche. We hypothesized that utilizing unusual food resources contributes to pika persistence in this unusual climate. Moss comprised more than 60% of the diet at 2 sites, more than observed for any mammalian herbivore in the wild. Moss is available year-round in this habitat; thus, by specializing on moss, pikas do not have to construct large food caches to survive winter. These results suggest a larger degree of behavioral and dietary plasticity than previously assumed for this species. Understanding a species’ capacity to adapt its foraging strategies to new resource landscapes will be essential to assessing its vulnerability to future climate change and to developing conservation plans.

Measurement of stress hormone metabolites in fecal samples has become a common method to assess physiological stress in wildlife populations. Glucocorticoid metabolite (GCM) measurements can be collected noninvasively, and studies relating this stress metric to anthropogenic disturbance are increasing. However, environmental characteristics (e.g., temperature) can alter measured GCM concentration when fecal samples cannot be collected immediately after defecation. This effect can confound efforts to separate environmental factors causing predeposition physiological stress in an individual from those acting on a fecal sample postdeposition. We used fecal samples from American pikas (Ochotona princeps) to examine the influence of environmental conditions on GCM concentration by (1) comparing GCM concentration measured in freshly collected control samples to those placed in natural habitats for timed exposure, and (2) relating GCM concentration in samples collected noninvasively throughout the western United States to local environmental characteristics measured before and after deposition. Our timed‐exposure trials clarified the spatial scale at which exposure to environmental factors postdeposition influences GCM concentration in pika feces. Also, fecal samples collected from occupied pika habitats throughout the species' range revealed significant relationships between GCM and metrics of climate during the postdeposition period (maximum temperature, minimum temperature, and precipitation during the month of sample collection). Conversely, we found no such relationships between GCM and metrics of climate during the predeposition period (prior to the month of sample collection). Together, these results indicate that noninvasive measurement of physiological stress in pikas across the western US may be confounded by climatic conditions in the postdeposition environment when samples cannot be collected immediately after defecation. Our results reiterate the importance of considering postdeposition environmental influences on this stress metric, especially in multiregional comparisons. However, measurements of fecal GCM concentration should prove useful for population monitoring within an eco‐region or when postdeposition exposure can be minimized.