Integrating Western science and traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) to understand Aphonopelma diversity across the Madrean sky islands and educate K-12 tribal students

Adapting to climate change is a fundamental challenge for life on Earth. As organisms are forced to move in search of hospitable habitat, species leave areas no longer favorable and expand into new areas, or they go extinct. These events are playing out across North America’s Madrean Pine-Oak woodlands, a biodiversity hotspot, as increasing temperatures and decreasing precipitation push the endemic organisms further up the mountains. With one-fifth of the world’s invertebrates at risk for extinction, species with a limited ability to move, like the long-lived Aphonopelma, are of particular concern. If these species are lost to extinction before discovery, this knowledge will be lost forever. Importantly, this biodiversity hotspot is found within the sovereign land of the Apache and Tohono O’odham peoples. This land holds significant scientific and cultural knowledge (Traditional Ecological Knowledge) for these tribes. Gained through thousands of years of living with the land, tribes have an intimate understanding of the interconnections between people and the environment (e.g., how climate change has altered the patterns and distributions of biodiversity). The goal of this research is to integrate Western science and TEK to better understand the evolutionary patterns and processes that led to the remarkable radiation of Aphonopelma spiders throughout the sky islands, and how climate change is going to impact this diversity in the future. Through this research, we work with San Carlos Apache elders to show tribal K-12 students how TEK and Western science can be utilized together to better understand the world around them.