NO ROOM AT THE TOP

摘要

High-mountain species are particularly susceptible to global warming-and North America's cold-loving pikas may be the most vulnerable of all. Biologist Chris Ray felt something tug at her shoe as she sat in a steep boulder field at 10,000 feet in Montana's Gallatin Range waiting for a female pika to emerge from the rocks. Pikas are fuzzy, potato-sized herbivores that inhabit the tops of Western mountains. Frantic workers, they collect large piles of wildflowers and grasses during summer - a process called haying - to eat during winter. Ray, who has studied pikas in the rugged mountains outside Bozeman for 16 years, looked down to see a pika nibbling at her sneaker. "It was trying to hay my laces," she says, laughing at the recollection. "They also like backpack straps, the more colorful the better."