Project description
Understanding environmental variability effects on wild populations
Climate change has altered the mean and short-term variability of environmental factors such as temperature and food resources. While the effects on wild populations are apparent for changes in the mean environment, the impacts of changes in the magnitude of environmental fluctuations are poorly understood. Understanding these impacts is crucial for predicting the effects of climate change on biodiversity. Supported by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) programme, the DROVE project aims to understand how environmental variability affects wild populations. Using data from long-term individual-based population datasets of the great tit (Parus major), it will build population models to identify demographic strategies that underlie population persistence under climate change. DROVE will provide population dynamics theory-based statistical tools.
Objective
Ongoing climate change has altered both mean and short-term temporal variability of environmental conditions (such as temperature or food resources). While there is strong evidence that wild populations are deeply influenced by changes in the mean environmental conditions and respond accordingly (e.g. shifts in phenology, in species ranges), population responses to changes in the magnitude of environmental fluctuations are poorly understood. This knowledge is, however, crucial to better predict and anticipate climate change impacts on biodiversity. Hosted at the Institute of Mathematics of Bordeaux (University of Bordeaux), the project DROVE will be coordinated by Christie Le Coeur, a specialist in population ecology, who will benefit from the supervisors (Dr. F. Barraquand) expertise in ecological statistics and theory. This project aims to provide a robust statistical and theoretical framework to unravel the effects of changes in environmental variability on dynamics of wild populations, and to characterise the demographic mechanisms responsible for their persistence under climate change.
This goal will be achieved by defining metrics to measure population persistence and demographic strategies in a variable but also density-dependent environment (when population growth slows down as population density increases) as previous work on variable environments has ignored this almost ubiquitous population regulation. The researcher will then build population models with data from long-term, individual-based population datasets of a well-studied species across Europe, the great tit (Parus major), to explain intra- and inter-population variations in demographic strategies and persistence in varying environments. Combining long-term empirical surveys with state-of-the-art model development, this project will provide statistical tools solidly grounded in population dynamics theory to understand environmental variability effects on wild populations under climate change.
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. This project's classification has been validated by the project's team.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. This project's classification has been validated by the project's team.
Keywords
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Main Programme
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European FellowshipsCoordinator
33000 Bordeaux
France