CLIMGROWTH · Effects of climate change on adult body size: Towards an integrative approach to understand the underlying mechanisms, the consequences across the lifespan, and improve our predictive ability
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2021-09-01 → 2024-04-30
- EU contribution
- €209,598
- Participants
- 3
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
Effects of climate change on adult body size: Towards an integrative approach to understand the underlying mechanisms, the consequences across the lifespan, and improve our predictive ability
Changes in adult body size have become a flagship response to climate change. In organisms with a finite growth, as mammals and birds (higher vertebrates), it is thought to result foremost from climate-induced changes in growth trajectories (plasticity) rather than from changes in the frequency of alleles coding for body size (microevolution). Quantifying the relative contributions of these two mechanisms is, however, fundamental to be able to predict the speed of responses to climate changes and the ability of species to adapt to these changes in the long term. These knowledge gaps were addressed by combining complex, state-of-the-art, statistical modelling approaches: (1) testing for the first time in a higher vertebrate the contribution of developmental plasticity and microevolution at accounting for a change in body size in response to climate change using pedigree-based quantitative genetic models; (2) providing long-awaited results on the lifelong consequences of natal climatic conditions on individual life histories, (3) their transgenerational effects on offspring life histories; and (4) addressing the debate between quantitative geneticists and demographers in how to generate reliable predictions for responses to climate change by applying the different approaches in the same study system. This project provides the first evidence of microevolutionary changes in size in a vertebrate in response to climate change, of the lifelong effects of the growing condition and of the effects on individual fitness of these changes in size.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
Changes in adult body size have become a flagship response to climate change. In organisms with a finite growth, as mammals and birds (higher vertebrates), it is thought to result foremost from climate-induced changes in growth trajectories (plasticity) rather than from changes in the frequency of alleles coding for body size (microevolution). As a key ecological trait, body size is also an important driver of individual life history: individual growth conditions will ultimately determine maturation, reproduction and ageing. However, to date no studies on higher vertebrates have formally investigated the contribution of developmental plasticity vs. microevolution at explaining changes in adult body size in response to climate change and, more importantly, no studies have tested for lifelong effects of climate-induced change in growth and size on individual life history within and between generations. In CLIMGROWTH, I propose to focus on the Alpine swift, a species of outstanding morphological and metabolic characteristics (non-stop flights of up to 200 days), for which preliminary results show a significant increase in body size. In particular, I will use an unprecedented long-term database (>4,000 individuals, >20 years) to combine complex, state-of-the-art, statistical modelling approaches in order to address these knowledge gaps by: (1) testing for the first time in a higher vertebrate the contribution of developmental plasticity and microevolution at accounting for a change in body size in response to climate change using pedigree-based quantitative genetic models; (2) providing long-awaited results on the lifelong consequences of natal climatic conditions on individual life histories, (3) their transgenerational effects on offspring life histories; and (4) addressing the debate between quantitative geneticists and demographers in how to generate reliable predictions for responses to climate change by applying the different approaches in the same study system.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- SCHWEIZERISCHE VOGELWARTE SEMPACH · SEMPACHCoordinatorSwitzerland
- THE UNIVERSITY COURT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF ABERDEEN · AberdeenUnited Kingdom
- UNIVERSITY OF OTTAWA · OttawaCanada
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union