Summary
Here I will establish eco-evolutionary rescue analyses as a predictive science. I will do this by developing theories, principles and tools for assessing whether populations can cope with changes in the environment at both short (ecological) and long (evolutionary) timescales. I contend that analyses involving the capacity of organisms to adapt to environmental changes must be based on theories including realistic ecological assumptions. My aim is therefore to develop a common theoretical framework for analyses of eco-evolutionary dynamics that includes basic features that characterize almost all natural populations, such as stochastic fluctuations in population size, density-dependent feedback mechanisms and dispersal among geographically separate populations. I will be able to achieve this ambitious goal because I have recently been involved in developing a new set of theories that have identified novel quantities based on general ecological characteristics that eco-evolutionary processes tend to maximize. These provide objective measures of a population’s capacity to change, which can be used to assess the consequences of habitat loss and changes in environment variation such as those expected due to climate change. I will be able to parameterize these models via my access to one of the largest individual-based long-term field studies of any vertebrate species including data of more than 36000 individual house sparrows from 18 populations on islands within a large geographical area of northern Norway, which will enable me to quantify processes rarely analysed before in natural populations. A central focus will be to derive new metrics that describe how the degree of persistence of a population to environmental change depends upon its size and population dynamic characteristics. Thus, this project will provide operationalization of eco-evolutionary rescue analyses as a research field for assessment of the vulnerability of species to global changes.
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| Web resources: | https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101095997 |
| Start date: | 01-07-2023 |
| End date: | 30-06-2028 |
| Total budget - Public funding: | 2 500 000,00 Euro - 2 500 000,00 Euro |
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Original description
Here I will establish eco-evolutionary rescue analyses as a predictive science. I will do this by developing theories, principles and tools for assessing whether populations can cope with changes in the environment at both short (ecological) and long (evolutionary) timescales. I contend that analyses involving the capacity of organisms to adapt to environmental changes must be based on theories including realistic ecological assumptions. My aim is therefore to develop a common theoretical framework for analyses of eco-evolutionary dynamics that includes basic features that characterize almost all natural populations, such as stochastic fluctuations in population size, density-dependent feedback mechanisms and dispersal among geographically separate populations. I will be able to achieve this ambitious goal because I have recently been involved in developing a new set of theories that have identified novel quantities based on general ecological characteristics that eco-evolutionary processes tend to maximize. These provide objective measures of a population’s capacity to change, which can be used to assess the consequences of habitat loss and changes in environment variation such as those expected due to climate change. I will be able to parameterize these models via my access to one of the largest individual-based long-term field studies of any vertebrate species including data of more than 36000 individual house sparrows from 18 populations on islands within a large geographical area of northern Norway, which will enable me to quantify processes rarely analysed before in natural populations. A central focus will be to derive new metrics that describe how the degree of persistence of a population to environmental change depends upon its size and population dynamic characteristics. Thus, this project will provide operationalization of eco-evolutionary rescue analyses as a research field for assessment of the vulnerability of species to global changes.Status
SIGNEDCall topic
ERC-2022-ADGUpdate Date
12-03-2024
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