Because pikas are so vulnerable to high temperatures, scientists regard them as early sentinels of global warming. We used data obtained during an 11-year period The American pika has a brown and black coloration, which is meant to camouflage them among rocks. The Ladak pika is found in the mountain ranges of northern India, northeastern Pakistan, and western China including the provinces of Qinghai, Xizang and Xinjiang, as well as across the Tibetan Plateau. We studied the home ranges of Ochotona curzoniae, also known as the black-lipped pika or plateau pika. One line of evidence points to pikas being a pest, which has led to massive attempts to eradicate pika populations. The relationship between pika colonies and habitat use in taxa other than birds and carnivores is still poorly studied, and other herpetofauna (e.g. We owe our ability to characterize pika habitat on the Qinghai-Tibetan plateau to two professional artists that sketched the microhabitat patterns onto graph paper in 1992, J. D. Kjelgaard and M. J. Edwards. During the summer, they put on a much lighter coat of fur—however, the hair is still thick enough that a pika might overheat if … Misunderstanding of the function of the plateau pika (Ochotona curzoniae) results in diminishing the diversity of both fauna and flora species and collapse of the the food on the Qinghai-Tibetan plateau. 1996) because of its function in creating disturbance and fostering biodiversity (Smith and Foggin 1999; Wangdwei et al. Mammals rely on habitat resources for survival and reproduction. Researchers surveyed pika habitat throughout the north Lake Tahoe area and found that pikas had … techniques can provide a means to combine habitat data with animal location data to analyze these spatial patterns. The plateau pika (Ochotona curzoniae) is a keystone species in the alpine rangeland ecosystem of the Qinghai–Tibetan Plateau. The American pika is a small mammal related to rabbits and hares that lives in alpine areas throughout western North America. Pika fur is thick to keep them warm in the winter. snake species, the Mongolian toad Bufo raddei, and Plateau frog Nanorana pleskei) have been observed using pika burrows (Hogan, 2010; Qi Yin, personal communication). Conversely, the plateau pika has been categorized as a keystone species (Power et al. We studied microhabitats used by plateau pikas (Ochotona curzoniae) of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau. Mammals rely on habitat resources for survival and reproduction. Sixteen Earthwatch volunteers made our research possible in 1990 and were enthusiastic and very competent assistants. Most previous studies of habitat selection by plateau pika have been conducted at a local microhabitat scale; however, little is known about the relationship between the distribution of plateau pika and macrohabitat factors at broad spatial scales. They inhabit valleys at elevations between 4,300 … Pikas are small, semi-fossorial mammals in the order Lagomorpha. The plateau pika (Ochotona curzoniae), a small burrowing lagomorph that occupies the high alpine grassland ecosystems of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau in western China, remains a controversial subject among policymakers and researchers. 2008). Pikas are extremely sensitive to high temperatures, and they will die under brief exposure to temperatures above 78–85°F. 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