Chasing the Niche: Escaping Climate Change Threats in Place, Time, and Space

New research by Ranjan Muthukrishnan and his colleagues explores how species adapt to climate change by changing their phenology, behavior, and/or range. The authors worked with Life Science Studios to create an illustration that would demonstrate a species using different ecological responses to mitigate the impacts of a warming climate. Check out the publication in Global Change Biology.

First, we needed to pick a species! We chose a lizard in a rocky, mountainous landscape where climate change has made its usual perch on a rock too hot. The lizard may adapt by altering its behavior (seeking shade), changing its phenology (reproducing during cooler times of the year), shifting its range (to higher, cooler elevations), or a combination of all three responses.

The Illustration Process

With all of our clients, the first step is brainstorming. There are many ways to illustrate a concept, so I like to sketch out a number of ideas to present to a client. Here is the sketch sheet I sent to the authors for this project. As you can see, there were a bunch of different ways I was thinking about depicting the concept of ecological changes to climate change. We ultimately settled on a more artistic vision of a lizard in a full landscape.

The final design involved painting individual elements and combining them in Photoshop and Illustrator. Each component, like this little lizard on her rock, was painted using watercolors.

The paintings were then stitched together and the wording and borders added in Adobe Illustrator to create the final figure for publication.