Projecting global biodiversity responses from first biological principles

Project Information

SCALE

Grant agreement ID: 843094

DOI

10.3030/843094

Project closed

EC signature date 8 November 2019

Start date 1 December 2019

End date 30 November 2022

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Total cost

€ 232 497,60

EU contribution

€ 232 497,60

Coordinated by

UNIVERSIDAD REY JUAN CARLOS
Spain

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - SCALE (Projecting global biodiversity responses from first biological principles)

Reporting period: 2021-12-01 to 2022-11-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Forecasting the responses of organisms to global climate and habitat change remains a chef priority for ecological research. Reliable projections of these responses require integrating information on the physiological and behavioural traits that determine the capacity of organisms to either buffer or adapt to environmental change. However, most of our current predictive tools rely on phenomenological models built on observed organismal-environment correlations, with a limited capacity to predict organismal performance under unprecedented environmental conditions.

In macroecology – the study of relationships between organisms and their environment at large spatial scales – mechanistic approaches are emerging strongly. Unlike phenomenological models, these mechanistic models build upon physical principles of energy and mass transfer and physiological information to predict how key state variables such as body temperature, metabolic rate, or water balance respond to climate across space and time. Despite their potential, mechanistic models face important challenges in macroecology such as the problem of how to scale up individual metrics into higher levels of ecological organization such as populations and species assemblages.

SCALE adopts a mechanistic perspective to investigate how heat and mass balances scale up into macroecological and macroevolutionary patterns across different animal taxa including terrestrial and aquatic ectotherms and endotherms. To achieve this, we developed biophysical models of heat and mass transfer and used cutting-edge computational techniques to simulate the response of multiple species to climate and habitat change. The overall objectives of SCALE include:

(1) To develop and disseminate mechanistic models providing access to newly developed software and organizing workshops to facilitate their implementation;

(2) To validate the models comparing predicted vs observed patterns of species’ functional traits across broad-scale climatic gradients;

(3) To project the models’ predictions into future climate change scenarios.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

1. Modelling the direction and constraints on the evolution of functional trait in reptiles

We developed biophysical models to predict body temperature and physiological performance of reptiles and used them to investigate how thermal performance varies in response to climate across species with different body sizes, skin colours, thermoregulatory capacity, and physiological tolerance. This global analysis allowed us to numerically predict the direction and strength of selection on different functional traits. To test these predictions, we coordinated different experts in macroecology and thermal physiology and compared predicted vs observed patterns using published data of more than 1200 species of reptiles. We found that models accurately predict the direction and strength of the effect of climate on different functional traits on a global scale.

2. Modelling broad-scale responses of tropical ectotherms to climate change

Many ectotherms such as lizards exploit the heterogeneity of their environments to control body temperature behaviourally, e.g. moving between sun-exposed and shaded microenvironments. Yet, we lack a method to quantify this behavioural buffering capacity on a broad scale. We used our ectotherm biophysical model to evaluate the potential of behavioural thermoregulation to buffer body temperature against climate change in Neotropical, forest-dwelling lizards – a group that is especially vulnerable to warming. We found that the predicted increase in ambient temperature in the Amazon could exceed the estimated maximum buffering capacity of lizards. Our approach allows, for the first time, to compute the capacity of tropical lizards to buffer the impacts of warming – a critical milestone towards designing effective management strategies to reduce the vulnerability of these species to climate and habitat change.

3. Modelling metabolic rate and the response of aquatic ectotherms to climate change

Organismal responses to climate change are mediated through its effects on physiology. In aquatic environments, both water temperature and oxygen availability may modulate these responses by altering the metabolism fuelling physiological performance. However, ecological models aimed at predicting how environmental factors shape aerobic metabolism disregard the role of oxygen supply. We developed a biophysical model to investigate how oxygen uptake capacity affects the response of aquatic ectotherms to climate warming. In a comparative analysis across fish species, we showed that the model accurately predicts complex interactions between body size and temperature on fish aerobic scope. Our results suggest that larger species may be more constrained than smaller species in warming waters due to physical limitations in oxygen uptake capacity.

4. Modelling the costs of thermoregulation in endotherms

Biophysical models of heat balance can estimate the metabolic cost required for an endothermic organism such as a bird or a mammal to maintain constant body temperature in a variable environment. We used biophysical models to address the outstanding question in macroecology of why body size of bats does not follow the geographical and evolutionary patterns observed among non-volant mammals. By modelling the costs of thermoregulation and the costs of flight, we found that these costs likely constrain body size and shape, especially in colder climates. By analysing size and shape of 278 bat species, we found that morphological evolution in bats varies with climate and that the strength of selection is higher in colder than in warmer regions, consistently with the model’s prediction. These results shed light on a longstanding debate over bats’ conformity to macroevolutionary patterns observed in other mammals and offers a novel procedure for investigating complex macroecological patterns from first principles.

5. Organization of workshops and communication activities

A key objective SCALE is to disseminate mechanistic modelling approaches among researchers of different disciplines such as physiology and macroecology, and different systems such as terrestrial and aquatic environments. To achieve this, we organized two workshops presenting the use of microclimate and biophysical models in species distribution modelling and climate change impacts forecasting (IBS 2022, CSEE 2021). In addition, to reach a broader, non-specialist audience, we launched a blog presenting the most relevant results of the project and developed two “Shiny Apps” in R to allow any user to interact with the biophysical models online.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The SCALE project has achieved its different proposed impacts including the development and dissemination of different mechanistic models to predict organismal-environment interactions under both current and future climatic scenarios. Our research has been published in high-impact, multidisciplinary journals such as Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reaching a significant impact in the media.

Graphical abstract