Details of Award
NERC Reference : NE/N002849/1
Interactions between sources of environmental change: How do resource quality and coloured environments drive multi-trophic eco-evolutionary dynamics?
Grant Award
- Principal Investigator:
- Professor MS Fowler, Swansea University, College of Science
- Co-Investigator:
- Dr C Yuan, Swansea University, College of Science
- Grant held at:
- Swansea University, College of Science
- Science Area:
- Terrestrial
- Overall Classification:
- Panel D
- ENRIs:
- Biodiversity
- Global Change
- Natural Resource Management
- Science Topics:
- Community Ecology
- Population Ecology
- Mathematical Analysis
- Numerical Analysis
- Abstract:
- Environmental variation is in all natural ecosystems. Understanding how it affects individuals within a species, changes their population size and interactions between species is the bedrock of ecology. Seasonal patterns in weather, periods of drought or flooding and large-scale regional climate changes, such as El Ni?o, are examples of environmental variation across the world. Given the future impacts of climate change on biodiversity, this fundamental ecological process is now an incredibly important and urgent issue for scientists and society. Recent climate warming has resulted in a range of species responses, such as latitudinal and altitudinal shifts in the geographic distribution of populations and changes in the timing of key life cycle events, which may increase extinction risks. For example, El Ni?o events are increasing in frequency, which will have a dramatic impact on biodiversity across large regions of the world. These changes in environmental variation will affect our ability to predict how species and their interactions will respond to climate change, with important implications for the management of natural populations, such as fisheries and biological pest control. Changes in environmental conditions can be thought of in a similar way to the different colours in the visible light spectrum. Rapid environmental changes dominate in "blue" environments (short wavelengths are most important in blue light); slow changes dominate in "red" environments (long wavelengths are most important in red light); "white" environments are random; an equal mixture of fast and slow changes. We will focus on how species respond to two sources of environmental variation that may interact with each other; fluctuations in temperature (specifically the colour of those fluctuations), a key driver of species' responses to climate change, and variation in food quality, which is a measure of environmental degradation. We will study the impact of these environmental changes on the relationship between an insect and a parasitic wasp in lab experiments. The insect is a pest around the world, so we will learn about how pest species will respond to climate change. Parasitic wasps are a highly diverse group of organisms that play a crucial role in ecological communities and in regulating insect crop pests. As well as informing us about how predators and prey respond to environmental variation generally, we will learn whether this might lead to more pest problems in the future. Laboratory systems have been used to answer questions in ecology and evolution that are extremely difficult to address in the field. When combined with mathematical models, as we propose to do, they have greatly improved our understanding of invasion, biological control and harvesting. The theory underlying the impact of environmental variation on biodiversity has received considerable attention recently, but we will develop this theory to more accurately reflect the biology of many species. Some species only reproduce once a year (the focus of previous theory), but many others reproduce continuously throughout the year (the focus of this study), facing constantly changing conditions within and across seasons. We are also interested in whether environmental change will affect important traits of species, such as how long they take to develop or if their body size changes, and how those changes affect their abundance. To fully understand these continuously reproducing populations that may be adapting to environmental change, we have to develop new mathematical approaches. We will develop the theory of environmental variation and link this to our laboratory system. We will study whether environmental variation causes potentially unexpected patterns in population size and whether it will change the risk of species going extinct. The novel experiments will test how well the models work, improving them by updating them with the new information from the experiments.
- Period of Award:
- 1 Mar 2016 - 30 Jun 2019
- Value:
- £267,090 Split Award
Authorised funds only
- NERC Reference:
- NE/N002849/1
- Grant Stage:
- Completed
- Scheme:
- Standard Grant FEC
- Grant Status:
- Closed
- Programme:
- Standard Grant
This grant award has a total value of £267,090
FDAB - Financial Details (Award breakdown by headings)
| DI - Other Costs | Indirect - Indirect Costs | DA - Investigators | DA - Estate Costs | DI - Staff | DI - T&S |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| £3,659 | £98,792 | £21,657 | £30,372 | £97,975 | £14,635 |
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