Descripción del proyecto
Un análisis más detallado de los cambios conductuales en los peces de río
Los peces, como muchas otras especies, están desplazándose a latitudes más elevadas a causa del desplazamiento de su «nicho climático» por el calentamiento global. Sin embargo, los peces en entornos cerrados, como ríos, tienen una capacidad limitada de seguir a su nicho climático porque sus movimientos limitados entre cuencas fluviales condicionan su «termorregulación conductual». No obstante, apenas disponemos de información sobre cómo los peces de agua dulce están cambiando su comportamiento en los ríos y cómo esto provoca que las poblaciones de peces sean resistentes a los efectos perjudiciales del aumento de las temperaturas. El proyecto financiado con fondos europeos THERMOS evaluará en qué medida la termorregulación conductual de los peces de río depende de fenotipos específicos en el marco de un síndrome de ritmo de vida que hace que las poblaciones vulnerables sean resistentes al cambio climático. El proyecto aplicará métodos innovadores para desarrollar modelos predictivos avanzados con el fin de medir la resiliencia de poblaciones vulnerables ante el calentamiento global.
Objetivo
Predicting, preventing and/ or ameliorating the consequences of climate change is a major strategic objective of the European Union, particularly regarding ecology and biodiversity. Many species compromised by warming have shifted their distributions to areas of higher latitude to track their ‘climate niche’. However, the ability of compromised species to track their climate niche is constrained if their habitats are closed environments, such as river catchments whose physical boundaries inhibit species’ movements between catchments. Many freshwater species can thus only respond to warming in-situ. In fishes, fine-tuning of body temperatures can be through ‘behavioural thermoregulation’, where individuals use microhabitats that provide their preferred thermal conditions, assisted by rivers providing highly heterogeneous thermal environments. There is, however, a substantial knowledge gap on how freshwater fish are altering their behaviour and habitat utilisation in rivers that are warming due to climate change, and how this confers resilience to populations from the damaging effects of temperature increases. Through strong reciprocal knowledge transfer, and high complementarity between all participants and the proposed research, the research quantifies the extent to which the behavioural thermoregulation of river fishes is governed by specific phenotypes within a pace-of-life-syndrome that provides vulnerable populations with inherent resilience to climate change. The Action delivers innovative and novel research by bringing together a highly talented researcher with substantial knowledge in freshwater fish ecology with a European research group with exceptional expertise in fish telemetry and behaviour, and microclimate ecology. The high complementarity of all participants enables use of state-of-the-art and innovative approaches to develop novel predictive models for quantifying the resilience of climatically vulnerable species to global temperature changes.
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MSCA-IF - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF)Coordinador
BH12 5BB Poole
Reino Unido