Project description
Eco-evolutionary dynamics in saving climate-threatened wild populations
Seasonal climates are rapidly changing, and wild animal populations will need to rapidly respond. However, our ability to forecast population adaptations to shifting seasonal climates is limited because existing eco-evolutionary theories rely on restrictive assumptions, and key micro-evolutionary processes have not been quantified in nature. The ERC-funded EcoEvoMove project aims to understand how ecological and evolutionary dynamics interact to prevent wild populations from going extinct due to changing seasonal climates. The project will develop new theoretical models and use advanced statistical methods to study the genetic effects driving micro-evolution in seasonal shifts. By testing the hypothesis that rapid micro-evolution could prevent population collapse, the project will provide valuable insights into preserving wild populations in the face of changing climates.
Objective
My overarching ambition in EcoEvoMove is to provide new theoretical and empirical understanding of how ecological and evolutionary dynamics can interact to ‘rescue’ wild populations from impending extinctions caused by changing and increasingly extreme seasonal climatic conditions.
Seasonal climates are rapidly changing, but capabilities to predict real-world population responses are still severely limited. Major problems are that 1) existing eco-evolutionary theory relies on core assumptions that are fundamentally violated by intrinsic properties of key traits that shape seasonal population dynamics, and 2) key micro-evolutionary processes that drive interacting seasonal and spatial dynamics have not yet been quantified in any wild population. We therefore have no capacity to predict how fast climate-impacted animal populations could adapt through changing seasonal movements, profoundly reshaping seasonal locations and wider ecological interactions.
I will provide:
1) new theory that identifies general principles of eco-evolutionary dynamics arising in seasonally- and spatially-varying environments;
2) the first empirical estimates of complex quantitative genetic effects and feedbacks that drive micro-evolution and plasticity in seasonal movements, and resulting spatio-seasonal dynamics, in nature.
By coupling these theoretical and empirical advances I will test the overarching hypothesis that rapid micro-evolution of the degree or form of seasonal movement could facilitate rapid ‘evolutionary rescue’ of wild meta-populations facing changing seasonal climates, preventing system collapse.
I will achieve these advances through new general theoretical models of complex non-linear eco-evolutionary dynamics; new widely-applicable statistical methods for quantitative genetic analyses of spatio-seasonal field data; and ground-breaking application to an unprecedented large-scale multi-generation dataset on a wild bird system exhibiting flexible seasonal migration.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- natural sciencesbiological scienceszoologyornithology
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesevolutionary biology
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Keywords
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme
Topic(s)
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC GrantsHost institution
7491 Trondheim
Norway