How does EVOlution affect extinction and species RANGE dynamics in the context of global change? Implications for ecological forecasting

The EVORANGE project is supported by the Agence National pour la Recherche  (ANR 6th Extinction) (French) as a 4 years project from 2010-2013. It is coordinated by Ophélie Ronce (ISEM, Montpellier)

Total grant: about 813 K€

OBJECTIVES

The analysis and forecasting of the impact of global change on biodiversity do not currently incorporate the effect of evolutionary changes in populations and species. affected by such environmental and biotic new conditions. In particular, predictions for changes in species distributions mediated by climate change often rely on the assumption that species’ climatic niches are conserved at the time scale at which the ecological modification occurs. Yet, a growing body of empirical evidence suggests that (i) current global change has already triggered evolutionary responses in some species, (ii) genetic diversity in the response to climatic factors exists at different scales (both within and between populations), which may affect how species will be impacted by climate change (Davis et al. 2005) or how ecosystems will respond to extreme climatic events (Reusch et al. 2005), (iii) ecological niches have been very labile in the evolutionary history of some species groups, which severely challenges the conventional wisdom of niche conservatism (Pearman et al. 2007). Whether contemporary evolutionary responses will be sufficiently strong and rapid to mitigate the effect of global change is however debated (Parmesan 2006). Rapid evolutionary responses can also carry costs in the long term, for instance through the loss of adaptive genetic diversity (e.g. Rodriguez-Trelles & Rodriguez 1998) or through the selection of trait values that compromise persistence (cases of evolutionary suicide, Ferrière et al. 2004; Rankin & Lopez-Sepulcre 2005).

Our aim is to improve our understanding of the role of evolutionary mechanisms in species responses to global change and of how these mechanisms may affect biodiversity patterns. More particularly, we wish to develop general predictions about situations where evolutionary responses are most likely (i) to occur, and (ii) to mitigate or aggravate the demographic response of species to global change. Ideally such studies should help to identify target species or groups of species for which incorporating evolutionary responses in ecological forecasts is most needed. We wish to address this question by combining a variety of approaches, including different types of modelling, experimental evolution, comparative analyses and data collection in natural populations.

Our objectives are: (i) to produce new theoretical developments to better integrate feedbacks between ecology and evolution in the context of global change, (ii) to use these theoretical tools to predict when it is most sensible to integrate evolution in ecological forecasts, and how predictions deviate from forecasts ignoring these effects (for instance when evolution will mitigate or aggravate the consequences of global change), (iii) in parallel, to extend our evaluation of the extent of niche conservatism by conducting comparative analyses in several new groups of plants and vertebrates, (iv) to use these comparative analyses to identify indicators (e.g. life history traits) associated with different levels of evolutionary lability in ecological niche dimensions, (v) to validate model predictions and assumptions using, at different levels, experimental evolution, comparative analyses and experiments under natural conditions. To achieve these goals, we have gathered a consortium with strong expertise in population genetics, adaptive dynamics, experimental evolution, ecology, phylogeny, mathematics, and computer science.

Scientific Partners:

ISEM - Montpellier: Ophélie Ronce, Oliver Kaltz, Guillaume Martin, Michael Hochberg.

LECA - Grenoble: Sébastien Lavergne, Wilfried Thuiller, Katja Schiffers, Florian Boucher

ENS - Paris: Régis Ferrière, David Claessen, Stéphane Legendre

MNHN Paris - Thomas Haevermans, Margaret Evans

CEFE - Montpellier: Isabelle Chuine, Anne Duputie, Sylvain Gandon