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Content archived on 2024-06-18

From communities to individuals: development of an early warning system to assess the relationship between climate warming and pollution in European freshwater ecosystems

Objective

The project addresses the interaction between parasitism and pollution in the context of climate change using parasites in freshwater fish as a model early warning system for altered environmental conditions by the application of a two-fold approach. First, a comparative assessment of the effect of temperature on parasite population and community structure dynamics will be carried out using ‘matched pairs’ control-impact design in a ‘natural experiment’ setup to test the ‘parasite numerical response’ hypothesis. Simultaneously, structural patterns in a free-living freshwater system, macrozoobentic communities, will be evaluated. Secondly, using the same sampling design the hypothesis of temperature-mediated alteration of pollutant metabolism will be tested by a comparative evaluation of the rates of toxic metal accumulation in selected dominant parasite and benthic invertebrate species. Identification of temporal and spatial patterns of abundance and community structure at different thermal regimes is the key to forecast the impacts of climate change on parasite communities in fish in European freshwater ecosystems. Further, linking ecological data to pollutant metabolism will provide novel insights on the response of parasite communities to environmental change which may help predict possible outcomes of host-parasite interaction and forecast minimum index values to detect pollution in the context of the effect of global warming. The novelty of the proposed research lies in its trans-disciplinary approach linking advanced ecology and ecotoxicology concepts and methods. The quantification of the response to increased ambient temperature of the model organism groups relates not solely to issues fundamental to assessment of climate-mediated community level alterations and host-parasite interactions but to wider conceptual and applied domains such as synergism and/or antagonism among multiple stressors and pollution risk analysis using model indicator systems.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

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Topic(s)

Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.

Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

FP7-PEOPLE-IEF-2008
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Funding Scheme

Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.

MC-IEF - Intra-European Fellowships (IEF)

Coordinator

UNIVERSITAET DUISBURG-ESSEN
EU contribution
€ 161 563,92
Address
UNIVERSITATSSTRASSE 2
45141 ESSEN
Germany

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Region
Nordrhein-Westfalen Düsseldorf Essen, Kreisfreie Stadt
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
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Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

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