Warmer waters will affect aquatic species. Some species might actually like a few degrees more (like me when I try to swim in Cornwall), while some might be very stressed by warmer temperatures. But what happens when species must compete against each other? I studied how competition between phytoplankton species might change with water temperature and nutrients; and how the traits of the species might help predict “who wins” in a warmer world.
Etudier l’impact du changement climatique sur un vertébré ectotherme : de l’individu à la communauté9/20/2017
S’il ne fait plus de doute que le réchauffement climatique impacte de nombreux êtres vivants, certains y sont plus sensibles que d’autres. C’est par exemple le cas des reptiles (Diapsides non Oiseaux) dont la température corporelle dépend directement de celle de leur environnement. J'ai étudié de manière expérimentale les conséquences d’un réchauffement de 2°C sur la survie du Lézard vivipare (Zootoca vivipara). J'ai également voulu savoir dans quelle mesure ce reptile présent sur l’ensemble du territoire européen pouvait échapper à cette perturbation en changeant d’aire de répartition ou en modifiant des caractéristiques phénotypiques tels que la couleur, leur préférence thermique ou leur microbiote intestinal. Mes travaux, publiés récemment dans les revues Plos Biology, Ecology Letters et Nature Ecology and Evolution révèlent que des populations de lézards vivipares pourraient souffrir d’une telle élévation de température, et que des perturbations de la flore microbienne pourraient contribuer à des déclins de leur survie. Ils montrent par ailleurs que certains représentants de l’espèce seront capables d’y faire face en migrant vers des régions plus tempérées de leur aire de répartition.
Ce post est un article de vulgarisation que j’ai écrit originalement comme ressource pédagogique à destination des enseignants de collège et lycée. Il a été récemment publié sur le site planet-vie.ens.fr, le voici reproduit. In a world that is warming at unprecedented rates, aquatic ecosystems are affected down to their very foundations, where microscopically small phytoplankton fuel food webs and are major contributors to biogeochemical cycles. We isolated green algae from a mixed, semi-natural mesocosm community after a decade of experimental warming, and find them strikingly different from their ambient-evolved counterparts.
My friend Elisa Schaum talks about our discoveries in a blog post previously published in Nature Ecology and Evolution Community Mom: What have you been up to?
Me (mentally): Flushing the cloaca of 200 lizards with saline solution, why? Me (out loud): Oh you know, the usual, science… Recent climate change is a threat to biodiversity, and while many studies focus on climate-driven extinction risk of charismatic vertebrates such as birds or mammals, none to our knowledge has studied the consequences of climate change on their gut microbial communities. We experimentally studied how the expected future climate may affect the diversity of gut microbiota in a small vertebrate ectotherm. We found that warmer temperatures led to a large loss in bacterial diversity, and this might have further consequences on hosts’ survival to climate change. What is an attractive mate? We more or less agree on attractiveness in the human realm. Ryan Gosling and Brad Pitt are generally considered hot, while Donald Trump… Less so. Ok, that is looks, but thinking of personality now? Well, again, Ryan Gosling and Brad Pitt are generally considered hot, while Donald Trump… Now what is attractiveness in non-human animals? Good thing that I am not a female lizard, because I would probably end up with the wrong male, but it seems that animals have a pretty good idea of what is considered an attractive mate for their species.
Snakes are scary, particularly if you are a lizard, so don’t tell your mum that you are seeing one!
If lizard mums are anything like mine, when they are cold they will order their son to put on a jumper. Well, turns out, lizards’ mums ARE like mine. Being the mean researcher that I am, I decided to scare a bit lizard mums during gestation, by putting them in presence of snake olfactive cues (yeah, in addition to being scary, snakes also stink). I maintained them like that for one month, and then after the females laid eggs, I investigated offspring phenotype. Fear, the anticipation of a potentially imminent danger, is taking over most decisions in modern human societies, from neighborhood watch program to foreign policy decisions. However, fear is not limited to human species and is now believed to influence almost all processes of animal ecology. The fear of being killed allows animals to escape predation, but in return diverts them from mating and eating. Lowering these activities down may have strong impact on population, community and ecosystem functioning.
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