Rapid climate change in Svalbard has already resulted in sea-ice loss, increased frequencies of rain-on-snow events, and icing of vegetation. The loss of sea ice reduces dispersal options while wintering herbivores are increasingly subject to potentially dispersal-triggering changes on land. Hence, understanding dispersal capacity and behavior is pivotal to understanding population viability under climate change. In this project, I will analyze Svalbard reindeer movements to investigate the occurrence and frequency of dispersal. I aim to test the hypotheses that (1) resource limitation in winter triggers dispersal, but (2) dispersal opportunity is increasingly limited by the lack of sea ice. I will identify and characterise the dispersing individuals (sex, age, body mass) and quantify under which environmental conditions and how often individuals disperse. I will also assess whether growing experience with age modifies individuals’ movements, and whether the offspring of dispersing mothers are more likely to disperse themselves. This project will contribute to the development of an integrative framework for spatially structured population viability predictions informed by past evolution, current evolutionary potential and dispersal capacity, to anticipate different future scenarios of change.
