Explaining responses to climate change in a wild vertebrate population

解释野生脊椎动物对气候变化的反应

基本信息

批准号：
NE/I023783/2
负责人：
Tim Coulson
金额：
$ 3.47万
依托单位：
University of Oxford
依托单位国家：
英国
项目类别：
Research Grant
财政年份：
2013
资助国家：
英国
起止时间：
2013 至无数据
项目状态：
已结题

来源：
https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=NE%2FI023783%2F2
关键词：
Explaining responses climate change wild

项目摘要

Recent changes in the earth's climate have been associated with numerous changes in animal and plant populations: for example, as temperatures have risen, the average timing of key events such as breeding has shifted substantially earlier in many species. However, we still have only limited knowledge of the actual mechanisms driving such responses to climate change. Importantly, we need to understand reasons for the changes that are occurring in the specific characteristics or traits (such as timing, growth or fecundity) that determine individuals' fitness and hence that shape a population's overall rate of growth or decline. Changes in a population's characteristics over time could be driven by one, or more, of three different processes:(i) population-level demographic changes in the representation of different age groups, each of which may display different trait values; (ii) individual-level phenotypic plasticity, whereby an individual expresses a different value of a trait dependent on the environmental conditions it experiences; (iii) genetic-level evolutionary change, whereby the genetic composition of the population changes in response to climate change favouring different genes under novel environmental conditions;These contrasting mechanisms can all generate a trend in the average value of a trait over time, but they have different implications for continued responses to a changing environment, and for whether or not a population can 'keep up' with climate change. Dissecting their relative contributions requires detailed, long-term data-sets. Partly because of this, this analysis of the relative contributions from each mechanism to observed responses to climate change have not yet, to our knowledge, been quantified for any wild animal population. We propose to address this gap using a study of a wild population of red deer (Cervus elaphus) on the Isle of Rum, NW Scotland.This project will enable an analysis of nearly four decades of data on more than 4000 individually-monitored deer. We will first explore the direct and indirect effects of climatic and/or vegetation variation on deer traits; this will require extensive assessments of changes in vegetation properties, for which we will use long-term ground-level and remote sensing data. Our primary aim is then to quantify the relative contributions of the three processes listed above to these trends. Finally, we will use insights from these analyses to create models of the dynamics of the population and of individual traits, and hence to generate predictions for future rates of population growth or decline.The Rum red deer project is arguably the best data resource anywhere for this analysis. The new data collection we propose will provide detailed indications of changes in vegetation properties over the study period, as well as sufficient numbers of records of the morphology, reproductive success, survival, timing characteristics and behaviour of individuals across different decades to test the mechanisms outlined above. Our multi-generation, genetically-validated pedigree will enable us to estimate the extent to which individual characteristics are under genetic control, whether climate change has altered patterns of natural selection on these characteristics, and whether the population has shown an evolutionary response to this selection. We also have extensive experience of the complex statistical and modelling techniques required for the analysis. Our ambition is to provide the most comprehensive analysis to date of how a wild animal population is responding to climate change and whether there are limits to its natural capacity to change. Our study will be the first of its kind. Given the importance of large herbivores to the way ecosystems function, our results will have implications for future management policy as well as offering fundamental insights into the mechanisms by which climate change affects wild populations.

地球气候的最新变化与动物和植物种群的众多变化有关：例如，随着温度的升高，许多物种的繁殖等关键事件的平均时机已经发生了很大变化。但是，我们仍然对推动这种对气候变化的反应的实际机制有限。重要的是，我们需要了解确定个人健康状况的特定特征或特征（例如时间，生长或繁殖力）中发生的变化的原因，从而塑造了人群总体的增长率或下降速度。人口特征随着时间的变化可以由三个不同的过程中的一个或更多过程驱动：（i）人口级的人口统计学变化在不同年龄段的表示中，每个年龄段的人口都可能显示出不同的性状值；（ii）个体级表型可塑性，因此，一个人表达了根据其经历的环境条件的不同特征的价值；（iii）遗传水平的进化变化，从而在新的环境条件下有利于不同基因的种群变化的遗传组成；这些对比机制都可以产生特征的平均价值随时间的趋势，但它们对环境的持续响应以及对环境的持续反应具有不同的含义，以及对人群的持续变化而变得越来越多。解剖其相对贡献需要详细的长期数据集。部分原因是，据我们所知，对每种机制对气候变化反应的相对贡献的这种分析尚未针对任何野生动物种群进行量化。我们建议通过对苏格兰西北朗姆酒岛上的野生鹿（Cervus Elaphus）的研究来解决这一差距。该项目将能够分析近40年的4000多个个人监测的鹿的数据。我们将首先探讨气候和/或植被变化对鹿性状的直接和间接影响；这将需要大量评估植被特性的变化，我们将使用长期的地面和遥感数据。然后，我们的主要目的是量化上述三个过程对这些趋势的相对贡献。最后，我们将使用这些分析中的见解来创建人口动态和个别特征的动态模型，从而为未来人口增长或下降的未来率产生预测。朗姆酒红鹿项目可以说是该分析的任何地方的最佳数据资源。我们提出的新数据收集将提供研究期间植被特性变化的详细迹象，以及在不同数十年中的个人的形态，生殖成功，生存特征和个人行为的足够数量，以测试上面概述的机制。我们的多代遗传验证的谱系将使我们能够估计个体特征受遗传控制的程度，气候变化是否改变了这些特征的自然选择模式，以及人群是否对此选择显示了进化反应。我们还拥有分析所需的复杂统计和建模技术的丰富经验。我们的野心是提供迄今为止野生动物种群如何应对气候变化以及其自然变化能力是否有限制的最全面分析。我们的研究将是同类的第一个。鉴于大型草食动物对生态系统功能的重要性，我们的结果将对未来的管理政策产生影响，并为气候变化影响野生种群的机制提供基本见解。