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Student Regular Poster Display

Physiology, Biochemistry, and Toxicology

Student

Student Regular Poster: PBT and SysEB, General

Reconstructing energetics from museum specimens reveals climate-driven physiological stress in montane grasshoppers

Tuesday, November 11, 2025
9:00 AM - 5:00 PM Pacific
Location: Exhibit Hall A-A1, OCC
Poster Display
Linking physiological stress to population-level responses is key to identifying species most vulnerable to climate change. Natural history collections offer a unique opportunity to investigate these connections across time. The University of Colorado Museum of Natural History holds over 20,000 grasshopper specimens collected during two distinct periods, separated by 60 years of anthropogenic climate warming. These specimens are accompanied by detailed records of abundance and phenology. In this study, I developed a morphometric model to estimate energy reserves from dried mass and external morphology, enabling the reconstruction of historical energetic states. Applying this model to montane grasshopper populations, I assessed how climate change has influenced energy balance and tested whether energetic state predicts long-term trends in abundance. This work provides new insights into the physiological mechanisms underlying population change and offers a broadly applicable framework for using museum specimens to evaluate climate impacts on insect energetics.