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Offspring coping abilities from stressed parents exposed to global warming in aquaculture and fisheries systems

Project description

Protecting fish populations amid climate change

Climate change poses a threat to ecosystems, impacting their resilience, biodiversity, and productivity. Among the pressing societal concerns is the security of food for human consumption, particularly concerning fish, a vital source of essential fatty acids and proteins for billions. Despite their importance, our ability to predict how climate change will affect fish populations remains limited. Crucially, there is a lack of comprehensive studies examining the multifaceted impacts of climate change on fish ecology, including genetics, behaviour, and community dynamics. Supported by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) programme, the CAPWARM project aims to fill these knowledge gaps and develop mitigation strategies to safeguard fish populations. The findings will assist in securing food sources and preserving marine biodiversity.

Objective

Climate change is affecting the ecosystem’s resilience, biodiversity, productivity, and health. One major societal issue is to secure food destined for human consumption. Fish are the primary resource for essential fatty acids and proteins for billions of people and they contribute significantly to species diversity and functioning of marine, estuarine, and freshwater ecosystems. Yet, we are still limited in our ability to accurately predict how climate-change stressors will affect fish populations. To date, we are crucially lacking studies evaluating the impacts of climate change linking subfields of fish ecology such as genetics, behaviour, physiology, community dynamics or spatial ecology. Other essential aspects of climate-change impacts, such as cross-generational effects and sex-specific responses of parents that could adaptively prepare the offspring, are also often ignored. The proposed project has three main objectives: (1) investigate the effects of parental thermal stress on offspring’s coping abilities to face multiple climate stressors, (2) evaluate the impact of thermal stress on sex-specific response and decipher the sex-specific parental effects on the next generation, and (3) identify, in collaboration with stakeholders from aquaculture and fishery sectors, mitigation strategies that can mediate these effects. CAPWARM includes laboratory and field work on two valuable salmonid species for human consumption: the Rainbow trout, Oncorhynchus mykiss, and the Atlantic Salmon, Salmo salar. The first accounts for 60% of EU freshwater fish farming, while the second is the first produced marine fish but is paradoxically declared at risk in most European waters. The results will be further discussed along with management practices available to mitigate parental thermal stress, in both aquaculture and wild contexts. CAPWARM outputs will be of high importance for fisheries, aquaculture, and conservation and fits with the climate action top priority of the EU.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

Keywords

Programme(s)

Topic(s)

Funding Scheme

HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships

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Call for proposal

(opens in new window) HORIZON-MSCA-2023-PF-01

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Coordinator

INSTITUT NATIONAL D'ENSEIGNEMENT SUPERIEUR POUR L'AGRICULTURE, L'ALIMENTATION ET L'ENVIRONNEMENT
Net EU contribution
€ 195 914,88
Address
42 RUE SCHEFFER
75116 Paris
France
Region
Ile-de-France Ile-de-France Paris
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
Links
Total cost
No data