scholarly journals Eco-evolutionary dynamics may show an irreversible regime shift, illustrated by salmonids facing climate change

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Junnosuke Horita ◽  
Yoh Iwasa ◽  
Yuuya Tachiki
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Life History ◽  
Body Size ◽  
Evolutionary Dynamics ◽  
Environmental Changes ◽  
Threshold Value ◽  
Masu Salmon ◽  
Assessment Model ◽  
Oncorhynchus Masou Masou ◽  
One Year

AbstractThe enhanced or reduced growth of juvenile masu salmon (Oncorhynchus masou masou) may result from climate changes to their environment and thus impact on the eco-evolutionary dynamics of their life-history choices. Male juveniles with status, i.e., if their body size is larger than a threshold, stay in the stream and become resident males reproducing for multiple years, while those with smaller status, i.e., their body size is below the threshold, migrate to the ocean and return to the stream one year later to reproduce only once. Since juvenile growth is suppressed by the density of resident males, the fraction of resident males may stay in equilibrium or fluctuate wildly over a 2-year period. When the threshold value evolves, the convergence stable strategy may generate either an equilibrium or large fluctuations of male residents. If environmental changes occur faster than the rate of evolutionary adaptation, the eco-evolutionary dynamics exhibit a qualitative shift in the population dynamics. We also investigated the relative assessment models, in which individual life-history choices are made based on the individual’s relative status within the juvenile population. The eco-evolutionary dynamics are very different from the absolute assessment model, demonstrating the importance of understanding the mechanisms of life history choices when predicting the impacts of climate change.

scholarly journals Life history, climate and biogeography interactively affect worldwide genetic diversity of plant and animal populations

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
H. De Kort ◽  
J. G. Prunier ◽  
S. Ducatez ◽  
O. Honnay ◽  
M. Baguette ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Genetic Diversity ◽  
Life History ◽  
Evolutionary Dynamics ◽  
Environmental Changes ◽  
Peripheral Populations ◽  
Plant Dispersal ◽  
Weak Support ◽  
Animal Populations ◽  
Plant Groups ◽  
Conservation Genetic

AbstractUnderstanding how biological and environmental factors interactively shape the global distribution of plant and animal genetic diversity is fundamental to biodiversity conservation. Genetic diversity measured in local populations (GDP) is correspondingly assumed representative for population fitness and eco-evolutionary dynamics. For 8356 populations across the globe, we report that plants systematically display much lower GDP than animals, and that life history traits shape GDP patterns both directly (animal longevity and size), and indirectly by mediating core-periphery patterns (animal fecundity and plant dispersal). Particularly in some plant groups, peripheral populations can sustain similar GDP as core populations, emphasizing their potential conservation value. We further find surprisingly weak support for general latitudinal GDP trends. Finally, contemporary rather than past climate contributes to the spatial distribution of GDP, suggesting that contemporary environmental changes affect global patterns of GDP. Our findings generate new perspectives for the conservation of genetic resources at worldwide and taxonomic-wide scales.

scholarly journals Climate change drives mountain butterflies towards the summits

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dennis Rödder ◽  
Thomas Schmitt ◽  
Patrick Gros ◽  
Werner Ulrich ◽  
Jan Christian Habel
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Life History ◽  
Climate Warming ◽  
Environmental Changes ◽  
Range Shifts ◽  
Solar Irradiation ◽  
High Mountain ◽  
Detailed Knowledge ◽  
Annual Range

AbstractClimate change impacts biodiversity and is driving range shifts of species and populations across the globe. To understand the effects of climate warming on biota, long-term observations of the occurrence of species and detailed knowledge on their ecology and life-history is crucial. Mountain species particularly suffer under climate warming and often respond to environmental changes by altitudinal range shifts. We assessed long-term distribution trends of mountain butterflies across the eastern Alps and calculated species’ specific annual range shifts based on field observations and species distribution models, counterbalancing the potential drawbacks of both approaches. We also compiled details on the ecology, behaviour and life-history, and the climate niche of each species assessed. We found that the highest altitudinal maxima were observed recently in the majority of cases, while the lowest altitudes of observations were recorded before 1980. Mobile and generalist species with a broad ecological amplitude tended to move uphill more than specialist and sedentary species. As main drivers we identified climatic conditions and topographic variables, such as insolation and solar irradiation. This study provides important evidence for responses of high mountain taxa to rapid climate change. Our study underlines the advantage of combining historical surveys and museum collection data with cutting-edge analyses.

The real “fire ants”: colony size and body size of workers influence the fate of boreal sand hill ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) after wildfires in Alberta, Canada

2014 ◽  
Vol 147 (4) ◽  
pp. 396-404 ◽  
Author(s):  
James R.N. Glasier ◽  
Scott E. Nielsen ◽  
John H. Acorn
Keyword(s):  
Life History ◽  
Species Richness ◽  
Body Size ◽  
Colony Size ◽  
Fire Ants ◽  
Fire Ant ◽  
Pitfall Traps ◽  
Sand Hills ◽  
One Year ◽  
Nest Type

AbstractOver two summers following accidental May wildfires, total ant (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) forager catch and species richness did not change in jack pine woodlands on sand hills in central Alberta, Canada. However, one year after a fire, smaller ants, and those in smaller colonies, were more abundant in pitfall traps, based on analysis of response ratios for each ant species and relationships to a variety of life history and organismal traits. Nest type and polygyny had no effect on post-fire ant forager catch. The numerical responses of individual ant species appear to be idiosyncratic, but three species of ants that are sand specialists were found to be particularly resilient to fire.

scholarly journals Cannibalism by damselflies increases with rising temperature

2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (5) ◽  
pp. 20170175 ◽  
Author(s):  
Denon Start ◽  
Devin Kirk ◽  
Dylan Shea ◽  
Benjamin Gilbert
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Life History ◽  
Body Size ◽  
Growth Rates ◽  
Effect Of Temperature ◽  
Intraspecific Interactions ◽  
Life History Stages ◽  
Consumption Rates ◽  
Increased Activity ◽  
Antagonistic Interactions

Trophic interactions are likely to change under climate warming. These interactions can be altered directly by changing consumption rates, or indirectly by altering growth rates and size asymmetries among individuals that in turn affect feeding. Understanding these processes is particularly important for intraspecific interactions, as direct and indirect changes may exacerbate antagonistic interactions. We examined the effect of temperature on activity rate, growth and intraspecific size asymmetries, and how these temperature dependencies affected cannibalism in Lestes congener , a damselfly with marked intraspecific variation in size. Temperature increased activity rates and exacerbated differences in body size by increasing growth rates. Increased activity and changes in body size interacted to increase cannibalism at higher temperatures. We argue that our results are likely to be general to species with life-history stages that vary in their temperature dependencies, and that the effects of climate change on communities may depend on the temperature dependencies of intraspecific interactions.

scholarly journals Various responses of pine marten morphology and demography to temporal climate changes and primary productivity

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Wereszczuk ◽  
Anastasia Fedotova ◽  
Adrian Marciszak ◽  
Marcin Popiołek ◽  
Arsenia Zharova ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Body Size ◽  
Sex Ratio ◽  
Primary Production ◽  
Primary Productivity ◽  
Environmental Changes ◽  
Time Lag ◽  
Time Lags ◽  
Pine Marten ◽  
Over Time

Abstract Climate and environmental changes affect species’ morphology and ecology; however, the response of a species to changes in abiotic and biotic factors is not always consistent. Here, we tested how the structural body size of the pine marten and its population sex ratio changed over time and alongside climate change. We analysed temporal changes in morphological traits using 11 measurements of pine marten skulls collected between 1903 to 2020, linking them with climatic and primary production variations. We assessed demographic changes by calculating temporal sex ratio changes over 61 years. Skull size, as a proxy of body size, increased in response to warmer and less snowy winters, with a three-year time-lag. However, changes in primary productivity rapidly shaped postorbital constriction regardless of body size changes and without time-lags, potentially demonstrating increased diet diversity in pine marten. According to climate change, the population sex ratio has skewed towards males over time. Our results suggest that climate conditions and primary production affect skull structural size, highlighting the potential various responses of pine marten morphology and ecology in relation to climate change. Recently changing population demographics, as a consequence of these processes, may constitute a threat to marten populations.

scholarly journals Divergent morphological responses to millennia of climate change in two species of bats from Hall’s Cave, Texas, USA

PeerJ ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. e10856
Author(s):  
Molly Moroz ◽  
Illiam S.C. Jackson ◽  
Daniel Ramirez ◽  
Melissa E. Kemp
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Body Size ◽  
Fossil Record ◽  
Environmental Changes ◽  
Future Climate Change ◽  
Dental Morphology ◽  
Centroid Size ◽  
Shape Variation ◽  
Temperature And Precipitation ◽  
Central Texas

How species will respond to ongoing and future climate change is one of the most important questions facing biodiversity scientists today. The fossil record provides unparalleled insight into past ecological and evolutionary responses to climate change, but the resource remains virtually untapped for many organisms. We use geometric morphometrics and a 25,000 year fossil record to quantify changes in body size and mandible shape through time and across climate regimes for two bat species present in Quaternary paleontological deposits of central Texas: Myotis velifer, a bat distributed throughout the Southwestern US and Mexico that is still found in central Texas today, and Eptesicus fuscus, a bat widely distributed throughout North America that has been extirpated in central Texas. Because of ecogeographic rules like Bergmann’s rule, which posits that endotherms are larger in colder environments, we hypothesized that both species were larger during cooler time intervals. Additionally, we hypothesized that both species would show variation in dental morphology across the studied sequence as a response to climate change. While we found a decrease in centroid size–a proxy for ­­body size–through time for both species, we could not establish a clear relationship between centroid size and temperature alone. However, we did find that specimens from drier environments were significantly larger than those from wetter ones. Furthermore, we found significant dental shape variation between environments reflecting different temperature levels for both species. Yet only M. velifer exhibited significant variation between environments of varying precipitation levels. This result was surprising because present-day populations of E. fuscus are highly variable across both temperature and precipitation gradients. We determined that the morphological change experienced by M. velifer through time, and between warmer and cooler temperatures, was associated with the coronoid process, condylar process, and the mandibular symphysis. These parts play a pivotal role in bite force, so changes in these features might relate to changes in diet. We show that long-term datasets derived from fossil material provide invaluable insight not only into the validity of ecogeographic rules, but also into the adaptive capacities of extant taxa when faced with environmental changes. Our results highlight diverging responses to a variety of climate factors that are relevant to consider in biodiversity research given ongoing global change.

scholarly journals Size matters: plasticity in metabolic scaling shows body-size may modulate responses to climate change

2014 ◽  
Vol 10 (8) ◽  
pp. 20140408 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Carey ◽  
Julia D. Sigwart
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Body Size ◽  
Ocean Acidification ◽  
Environmental Changes ◽  
Metabolic Scaling ◽  
Seawater Ph ◽  
Abiotic Control ◽  
Specific Factors ◽  
Species Specific ◽  
Increasing Temperature

Variability in metabolic scaling in animals, the relationship between metabolic rate ( R ) and body mass ( M ), has been a source of debate and controversy for decades. R is proportional to M b , the precise value of b much debated, but historically considered equal in all organisms. Recent metabolic theory, however, predicts b to vary among species with ecology and metabolic level, and may also vary within species under different abiotic conditions. Under climate change, most species will experience increased temperatures, and marine organisms will experience the additional stressor of decreased seawater pH (‘ocean acidification’). Responses to these environmental changes are modulated by myriad species-specific factors. Body-size is a fundamental biological parameter, but its modulating role is relatively unexplored. Here, we show that changes to metabolic scaling reveal asymmetric responses to stressors across body-size ranges; b is systematically decreased under increasing temperature in three grazing molluscs, indicating smaller individuals were more responsive to warming. Larger individuals were, however, more responsive to reduced seawater pH in low temperatures. These alterations to the allometry of metabolism highlight abiotic control of metabolic scaling, and indicate that responses to climate warming and ocean acidification may be modulated by body-size.

scholarly journals Abundance, Life History and Ligulosis in the Gobies (Teleostei) of the Inner Severn Estuary

1985 ◽  
Vol 65 (4) ◽  
pp. 951-968 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. N. Claridge ◽  
M. W. Hardisty ◽  
I. C. Potter ◽  
C. V. Williams
Keyword(s):  
Life History ◽  
Life Cycle ◽  
Body Size ◽  
Stomach Contents ◽  
Power Station ◽  
Severn Estuary ◽  
Pomatoschistus Minutus ◽  
Spawning Areas ◽  
One Year ◽  
Number Of Individuals

Eight species of the Gobiidae were recorded in weekly samples taken between July 1972 and June 1977 from the intake screens of Oldbury Power Station in the inner Severn Estuary. Buenia jeffreysii, Aphia minuta, Gobius paganellus and Gobius niger occurred infrequently and Crystallogobius linearis was only common in the late spring and summer of 1975 and 1976. Pomatoschistus microps, which peaked in numbers in the winter, increased in abundance each year between 1972 and 1977. The most numerous gobies were those belonging to the Pomatoschistus minutus complex which were separated into P. minutus and P. lozanoi only between June 1974 and July 1975. Seasonal trends in the abundance of these two species were similar, with elevated numbers occurring between July and September 1974 and in January 1975. Gonadosomatic indices and other data indicate that the decline in numbers after the latter month represented an emigration to spawning areas further down the estuary or in the Bristol Channel. Although P. minutus attained a larger body size than P. lozanoi, both these species and P. microps typically had a one year life cycle with only a small number of individuals surviving for a further few months. The fecundity of P. lozanoi, which ranged from 410–2453 (mean 1270), was lower than that reported for P. minutus in this and other studies. Analysis of stomach contents showed that the diet of both species was similar, consisting predominantly of gammarids and mysids. While both species were infected with Ligula intestinalis, the incidence of infection and the parasite index was greater in P. lozanoi than in P. minutus.

Life history of the frog Crinia signifera in Tasmania, Australia

2005 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 21 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. Lauck
Keyword(s):  
Life History ◽  
Body Size ◽  
Sexual Maturity ◽  
Reproductive Traits ◽  
Pitfall Trap ◽  
Male Reproductive Success ◽  
Female Life History ◽  
Primary Determinant ◽  
History Of ◽  
One Year

A pitfall-trap study was used to investigate the importance of body size, age, body condition (males only), season and growth history as determinates of male and female life-history fitness traits in a population of the frog Crinia signifera. Specimens were dissected to determine physiological characteristics and skeletochronology was used to determine age. Females lived longer and attained a larger size than males by delaying sexual maturity. Most females and males attained sexual maturity after three and two years, respectively; although eggs were found in females as young as one year old. Body size (but not age) was the primary determinant of fecundity, total reproductive output (clutch mass) and oviduct mass for females. Season was the predominant influence on egg size, with smaller eggs produced in summer than in other seasons. Direct investment in male gonads (testes size) was determined by body size and also by age. This, and the fact that sexual size dimorphism in amphibians is commonly female biased, suggests that male size is not necessarily the primary determinant of male reproductive success in C. signifera. Whereas selection on reproductive traits in females is likely to act predominantly on body size, selection in males is also likely to act on survival.

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