Project description
Predicting ecological vulnerability to climate change
As climate change accelerates, communities face increasingly extreme temperatures that challenge their survival. Understanding when these communities will reach their upper thermal limits is crucial for assessing their vulnerability. Current models often overlook critical factors, such as species interactions and the complexities of multi-trophic communities. Without considering these dynamics, predicting thermal vulnerability is incomplete. In this context, the ERC-funded ClimateCountDown project explores how species interactions, acclimation, evolution, and food web structures impact community thermal limits. By integrating semi-natural experiments, community models, and lake food web analyses, the project will predict when communities hit their thermal limits and how this relates to biodiversity loss, providing invaluable insights into climate change’s ecological impact.
Objective
When will communities reach their upper thermal limits (i.e. their climate countdown)? A key challenge for ecology and conservation only to be addressed by understanding the biological processes driving community thermal limits and assessing how fast warming actually pushes communities to these limits and thus increases their vulnerability.
The difference between upper thermal limit and habitat temperature is widely used to predict thermal vulnerability. Yet, existing models are mostly limited to single species and neglect key processes such as species interactions. To predict the thermal vulnerability of multi-trophic communities, we need to scale up thermal limits from species to community. This can only be done by answering four key questions: i) How do species interactions impact individual thermal limits? ii) How do acclimation and evolution influence community thermal limits? iii) How do temperature impacts on food web structure and community composition influence community thermal limits? iv) How does spatial heterogeneity in warming rates affect community’s vulnerability? To address these four key research questions I propose a novel integrative approach combining semi-natural aquatic experiments, temperature-dependent community models, analyses of 200 lake food webs and climatic projections. This ambitious research programme will evaluate how the evolutionary dynamics of each species, their interactions and food web structure collectively contribute to defining community thermal limits. It will predict the climate countdown of lake communities and test if the latter informs of biodiversity losses induced by climate warming.
This project will provide unprecedented insights on community thermal vulnerability by linking ecophysiology with community ecology. By uncovering the mechanisms of community thermal limits it will contribute to understanding how communities respond to climate change and provide a new means of predicting the future of biodiversity.
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. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- natural sciences biological sciences ecology
- natural sciences earth and related environmental sciences atmospheric sciences climatology climatic changes
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Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
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Topic(s)
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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.
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.
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.
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants
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Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2024-COG
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
75007 PARIS CEDEX 07
France
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