Come to beautiful Breckenridge, Colorado for a three-hour TEDx event: "Kaleidoscope. Many perspectives, one brilliant pattern — a day of ideas worth spreading in the heart of the Rockies."

INSTAAR's Chris Ray will be one of nine speakers. Here's more about her talk, and about her: 

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Reading climate in the rock rabbits

Chris Ray has spent 39 years studying American pikas – the rock rabbits – and what they reveal about a changing alpine ecosystem. 

Chris Ray is a research scientist with two institutes: the Institute for Bird Populations in California and the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research at the University of Colorado Boulder. She studies trends in animal populations, focusing on the effects of climate change.

Her 39-year study of the "rock rabbits" (American pikas) helps us understand how small mammals respond to climate and other forces shaping where they live and how they behave. She also studies the rocky habitats pikas use to endure some of the harshest weather on the planet.

Like a pika, Chris lives in a stone house high in the Rockies — but the resemblance stops there, as she spends most days on the computer helping her students with their research and estimating population trends, with one eye on the wildlife outside her window.

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Buy your tickets to the 3-hour event from TEDxBreckenridge >

(Use promo code "INSTAAR" for 10% off)