Climate driven phenotypic change: macroecology meets quantitative genetics
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Edinburgh
Department Name: Inst of Evolutionary Biology
Abstract
From aardvarks to zooplankton, how will life on earth be affected by climate change? The answer to this question has enormous implications for predicting how the world may look in fifty or a hundred years time. Yet, worryingly, scientists do not know the answer. What we do know is that species have evolved to adapt to climate change in the past and, on this basis, it seems reasonable to predict that evolution by natural selection might play an important role in the current climate crisis. But if climate change is as rapid as anticipated, we might find that even the fittest members of a species may not be fit enough. I will use a fellowship to address three main aims that will help in predicting species' responses to climate change. Most species are made up of many populations inhabiting different geographic areas and varying in phenotype, with phenotype often correlating with temperature or rainfall. We can use the present-day patterns in these correlations to see whether populations will need to evolve to a changed climate of the future. For example, walk through a wood in southern England during April and you might see a blanket of bluebells, but in the colder Scottish Highlands you'd need to wait another month to see this. Temperatures fluctuate from year to year, so that in some years the spring temperature in the Highlands may rise as high as that normally seen in the south. In these years, we can observe whether the Highland bluebells flower as early as is the norm for southern populations; if they do not, we can infer that populations are adapted to the temperatures that they experience in an average year. Such locally adapted populations will be rendered less well adapted if temperatures change. I will use observations of phenology collected by citizen scientists and collated by the Woodland Trust and British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) to gain the first insights into whether local adaptation is responsible for geographic differences in the timing of spring events for a host of plant and bird species. I will then ask whether plasticity or local adaptation can be predicted on the basis of the characteristics of species or environmental conditions. Natural selection operates when the phenotypes of 'fit' individuals differ from those of less fit individuals. To calculate phenotypic survival selection for a wild population, we need to measure a trait for lots of individuals and we need to know which individuals survive and perish. Most studies that measure selection do so at just one location. This is unfortunate because, in order to predict how a species will evolve, we need to know how selection varies among locations and over time. For over half a century bird ringers across Britain have caught birds, measuring the wing length of each one and submitting these data to the BTO. I will use these measurements for the blue tit - the most often caught bird - to estimate how selection on wing length varies in space and time and test whether aspects of climate drives selection. If a population has adapted to its local climate, how will selection act if the climate changes? One possibility is that, across the whole population, survival will decrease, but there are other possibilities and, to distinguish these, I will conduct a plant experiment. I will also look at birds to test whether species with nesting times that are adapted to local conditions are especially prone to population decline. Another consequence of climate change is that species may respond differently, disrupting inter-species interactions. I will compare communities composed of plant, butterfly and bird species, to identify cases where climate change may cause most disruption to interactions among species. The ways in which different species and populations adapt and respond to their environmental conditions fascinates me, and gaining a proper understanding of these processes and their consequences has become urgent.
Organisations
People |
ORCID iD |
Albert Phillimore (Principal Investigator) |
Publications
Shutt J
(2021)
Faecal metabarcoding reveals pervasive long-distance impacts of garden bird feeding
in Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
Shutt J
(2019)
A Spatial Perspective on the Phenological Distribution of the Spring Woodland Caterpillar Peak
in The American Naturalist
Shutt JD
(2020)
Gradients in richness and turnover of a forest passerine's diet prior to breeding: A mixed model approach applied to faecal metabarcoding data.
in Molecular ecology
Shutt JD
(2019)
The environmental predictors of spatio-temporal variation in the breeding phenology of a passerine bird.
in Proceedings. Biological sciences
Tansey CJ
(2017)
Estimating the ability of plants to plastically track temperature-mediated shifts in the spring phenological optimum.
in Global change biology
Usui T
(2017)
Temporal shifts and temperature sensitivity of avian spring migratory phenology: a phylogenetic meta-analysis.
in The Journal of animal ecology
Valente LM
(2015)
Equilibrium and non-equilibrium dynamics simultaneously operate in the Galápagos islands.
in Ecology letters
Valente LM
(2014)
The effects of island ontogeny on species diversity and phylogeny.
in Proceedings. Biological sciences
Description | 1. Spring timing (phenology) is highly plastic in response to temperature in birds and plants 2. This plasticity is adaptive and will help species adjust to changing conditions 3. I have co-developed methods for teasing apart the contributions of local adaptation and plasticity from spatiotemporal phenological data. 4. Using data from our transect we have shown that small birds may use multiple environmental cues to time breeding. 5. Passerine bird egg-laying is well matched to the peak availability of resources in UK woodlands in space, but over time there is variation in the degree of trophic match/mismatch. 6. Seabirds are generally not shifting their egg-laying dates in response to rising sea surface temperatures, nor are they generally advancing their egg-laying dates. |
Exploitation Route | Predicting how species may cope with climate change is of interest to conservation bodies and agriculture and forestry. |
Sectors | Environment |
Description | NERC New Investigator Grant |
Amount | £649,628 (GBP) |
Funding ID | NE/P011802/1 |
Organisation | Natural Environment Research Council |
Sector | Public |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 04/2017 |
End | 01/2021 |
Title | DAISIE |
Description | DAISIE is an R package for simulating and estimating immigration, colonisation, and speciation of lineages on islands. |
Type Of Material | Computer model/algorithm |
Year Produced | 2015 |
Provided To Others? | Yes |
Impact | None |
URL | https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/DAISIE/index.html |
Title | The correlates of intraspecific variation in nest height and nest building duration in the Eurasian blue tit Cyanistes caeruleus |
Description | Birds build nests primarily as a receptacle to lay their eggs in, but they can also provide secondary benefits including structural support, camouflage, and adjustment of the microclimate surrounding the eggs and offspring. The factors underlying intraspecific variation in nest characteristics are poorly understood. In this study, we aim to identify the environmental factors that predict nest height variation and the duration of nest building in blue tits (Cyanistes caeruleus), evaluating latitude, elevation, temperature, and the timing of egg-laying as predictors of nest height, while also taking into account female and male parental identity. Using 713 nest height observations collected over a period of five years along a 220km transect in Scotland, we found that if the annual mean timing of egg-laying was earlier, nests were taller. However, there was no correlation between nest height and elevation, latitude, the minimum temperature in the 14 days pre-egg-laying or the phenology of birds within a year. Female parental identity accounted for a large amount of variation in nest height, suggesting that individual behaviour has an influence on nest structure. We also found that nest building duration was shorter in years when egg laying occurred earlier in the year, and that across all observations taller nests took longer to build. Overall, our results show that blue tits are able to alter their nest characteristics based on conditions environmental gradients like latitude (in the case of building duration) and the annual mean phenological variation timing of egg laying, and that birds build relatively taller nests faster. |
Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
Year Produced | 2021 |
Provided To Others? | Yes |
URL | http://datadryad.org/stash/dataset/doi:10.5061/dryad.b5mkkwhcb |