The Taylor’s checkerspot butterfly (Euphydryas editha taylori) is an endangered species found only in rare, western prairies of the Pacific Northwest. As a prairie specialist, its interactions with its landscape are strongly influenced by vegetation patterns, including the availability, abundance and density of its host and nectar plants. Because of this, habitat fragmentation and degradation due to invasive species, changes to natural disturbance processes, and climate change influence this species survival.

To better understand how habitat specialists like the Taylor’s checkerspot are responding to climate change, we must first understand how climate conditions influence vegetation structure and composition in their prairie habitats. The South Puget Sound ecoregion contains the largest area of remaining native and semi-native grassland suitable for this species. However, invasive species have created a mosaic of fragmented habitat patches with limited connectivity between populations. Additionally, the loss of naturally occurring disturbance processes and the removal of traditional Indigenous land management has led to Douglas fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) encroachment, further reducing the size and connectivity of prairie patches. Climate change is interacting with these stressors in ways we do not yet fully understand, potentially hastening encroachment and disrupting the symbiotic interactions between the species and their host and nectar resources. Climate change will also likely disrupt management activities, reducing the time in which prescribed burns can be successfully and safely performed.

Fern will address these management challenges by creating a state-and-transition simulation model for butterfly habitat in the South Puget Sound. This model will allow ecologists and land managers to explore landscape-wide “what if” questions based on the interactions between vegetation, climate and management. Fern will create this model to investigate changes in land cover across Taylor checkerspot habitat under different management and climate scenarios. She will work with partners at Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, Ecostudies Institute, Joint Base Lewis-McChord and the Computational Ecology Group to develop practical management scenarios that include the realistic financial limitations of annual management activities. She will incorporate these management scenarios, and a set of time series maps, into a population model for the Taylor’s checkerspot to evaluate how its population may respond to these changing landscapes. The data obtained from this project can guide future management practices for this species by providing managers with target areas for prairie restoration under climate extremes, highlighting the subpopulations most vulnerable to extirpation and supplying new information on the efficacy of current management activities in a changing climate. A better understanding of how vegetation patterns across South Puget Sound prairies are likely to shift under climate change can also provide important insights for biologists and land managers working to conserve other rare and at-risk western prairie species including the Mazama pocket gopher and the Streaked Horned Lark.