TBAAMARE · Trait-based approaches across marine ecosystems
FP7 — People (Marie Curie Actions)
- Duration
- 2011-08-01 → 2012-07-31
- EU contribution
- €154,485
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MC-IIF
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
Trait-based approaches across marine ecosystems
Trait-based approaches are being increasingly used in ecology. They consider simultaneously multiple morphological and functional traits to explain community distributions along various environmental gradients and predict ecosystem functioning. The goal of this Incoming International Fellowship (IIF) was to enable the fellow, Christopher Klausmeier, to interact with researchers at DTU-Aqua and develop these trait-based approaches to modelling marine food webs. We have achieved this goal though a number of research and collabourative activities. Collabouration with DTU-Aqua scientists was greatly facilitated by a recently funded Center of Excellence in Trait-based Marine Ecology. The fellow was a regular participant in this centre's weekly seminar series and organised a working group on evolving food webs. The fellow gave four guest lectures in DTU courses, hosted two short-term visiting scientists, co-supervised two student projects, and served on one PhD defense committee. Research progressed on three fronts: 1) Development of methods for evolution in variable environments. The main result here was deriving a formula for the fitness gradient in spatially heterogeneous environments based on only local selective pressures. We are now extending it to spatiotemporally varying environments and asymmetric dispersal. 2) Modelling end-to-end food webs. The fellow co-supervised a student project linking plankton and fish community dynamics in a seasonal environment. Results include how seasonality is transmitted from the base of the food web to determine variability at higher trophic levels. The fellow also co-supervised another student who applied trait-based approaches to evolving food webs, and developed numerical methods for solving these models. Results are summarised as bifurcation diagrams showing how community structure depends on nutrient levels under different assumptions about trophic interaction. 3) Identifying key traits of zooplankton and fish. The fellow interacted with DTU-Aqua and other researchers to list key traits for these higher trophic levels. While there is no direct applicability of this research, it will enable improved understanding of marine food webs, which have economic impacts through fisheries and are important in coupled biogeochemical cycles and climate.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
Trait-based approaches are being increasingly used in ecology. They consider simultaneously multiple morphological and functional traits to explain community distributions along various environmental gradients and predict ecosystem functioning. Traditional taxon-based approaches become unwieldy as the number of species increases; trait-based approaches provide a way to simplify this complexity, by focusing attention on the functional traits that determine how organisms interact with each other and their environment. Although much of the work on trait-based approaches come from terrestrial plant ecology, we have recently begun to apply them to phytoplankton communities. While we have made good progress at applying trait-based approaches to phytoplankton, a significant challenge will be to extend these approaches to higher trophic levels in the aquatic ecosystem. The goal of this International Incoming Fellowship at DTU-Aqua is to work with researchers there to lay the foundation for applying trait-based approaches to understanding the entire aquatic food web, from phytoplankton to zooplankton and fish. In particular, we will: 1) identify and characterize key functional traits of zooplankton and fish, 2) develop a mechanistic basis for scaling zooplankton foraging traits to the population and community level, 3) investigate basic theoretical issues relating to the interaction of multiple traits, and 4) construct end-to-end adaptive food web models for aquatic ecosystems. The novelty of the project is that it brings together ideas from evolutionary game theory with detailed models of aquatic ecosystems. The project is a natural extension of fellow’s work that will benefit greatly from collaboration with the DTU-Aqua scientists, who are experts in mechanistic approaches to modeling zooplankton and fish. It should result in significant synergy and innovation, with tangible outcomes in both fundamental and applied aspects of aquatic ecosystem research.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- DANMARKS TEKNISKE UNIVERSITET · Kongens LyngbyCoordinatorDenmark
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union