Project description
Climate change and its impact on biodiversity
The productivity and growth rates of forests, crops, and wild vegetation throughout the world have gradually increased because of the air’s carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration. As these concentrations continues to rise, plants will likely respond by growing more robustly and expanding their ranges. Realistic projections of the biological impacts of climate change require a unified framework capable of integrating advances from distinct research areas. The EU-funded SCALE project aims to closely examine how heat- and water-transfer mechanisms determine global patterns of species richness and thermal adaptations of terrestrial ectotherms, a group that is especially vulnerable to global change.
Objective
Realistic projections of the biological impacts of climate change require a unified framework capable of integrating advances from distinct research areas such as ecophysiology, behavioural ecology, and biogeography. Mechanistic modelling in macroecology arises as a promising framework to address this challenge, because it aims at describing biodiversity patterns from biophysical, physiological, and behavioural processes determining the way organisms interact with their environment. In this project, I will investigate how heat- and water-transfer mechanisms determine global patterns of species richness and thermal adaptations of terrestrial ectotherms, a group that is especially vulnerable to global change. The specific objectives of this proposal are (1) to investigate how temperature regulation and water availability constraint global patterns of species richness of reptiles and amphibians; (2) investigate how temperature regulation influences patterns of variation of thermal tolerance across macroclimatic gradients; and finally, (3) forecast the response of these patterns to future climatic conditions. To achieve these objectives, I will combine cutting-edge biophysical models of heat- and water-transfer pathways between ectotherms and their environment, with empirical data on species’ geographical ranges and thermal tolerance traits obtained from the literature. Ultimately, this proposal will contribute to the emerging field of mechanistic modelling in macroecology, providing methods to integrate multiple sources of biological information, and techniques to forecast the organismal responses to climate change. The training in geographical analysis of mechanistic models will boost my development as an independent and innovative frontline researcher in macroecology in the EU.
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 sciencesecologyecosystems
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesbiological behavioural sciencesbehavioural ecology
- natural sciencesearth and related environmental sciencesatmospheric sciencesclimatologyclimatic changes
- natural sciencesearth and related environmental sciencesphysical geography
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Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
MSCA-IF - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF)Coordinator
28933 Mostoles
Spain