Summary
Predicting, preventing and/ or ameliorating the consequences of climate change is a major strategic objective of the European Union, particularly regarding ecology and biodiversity. Many species compromised by warming have shifted their distributions to areas of higher latitude to track their ‘climate niche’. However, the ability of compromised species to track their climate niche is constrained if their habitats are closed environments, such as river catchments whose physical boundaries inhibit species’ movements between catchments. Many freshwater species can thus only respond to warming in-situ. In fishes, fine-tuning of body temperatures can be through ‘behavioural thermoregulation’, where individuals use microhabitats that provide their preferred thermal conditions, assisted by rivers providing highly heterogeneous thermal environments. There is, however, a substantial knowledge gap on how freshwater fish are altering their behaviour and habitat utilisation in rivers that are warming due to climate change, and how this confers resilience to populations from the damaging effects of temperature increases. Through strong reciprocal knowledge transfer, and high complementarity between all participants and the proposed research, the research quantifies the extent to which the behavioural thermoregulation of river fishes is governed by specific phenotypes within a pace-of-life-syndrome that provides vulnerable populations with inherent resilience to climate change. The Action delivers innovative and novel research by bringing together a highly talented researcher with substantial knowledge in freshwater fish ecology with a European research group with exceptional expertise in fish telemetry and behaviour, and microclimate ecology. The high complementarity of all participants enables use of state-of-the-art and innovative approaches to develop novel predictive models for quantifying the resilience of climatically vulnerable species to global temperature changes.
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More information & hyperlinks
Web resources: | https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/891712 |
Start date: | 21-10-2020 |
End date: | 20-10-2022 |
Total budget - Public funding: | 212 933,76 Euro - 212 933,00 Euro |
Cordis data
Original description
Predicting, preventing and/ or ameliorating the consequences of climate change is a major strategic objective of the European Union, particularly regarding ecology and biodiversity. Many species compromised by warming have shifted their distributions to areas of higher latitude to track their ‘climate niche’. However, the ability of compromised species to track their climate niche is constrained if their habitats are closed environments, such as river catchments whose physical boundaries inhibit species’ movements between catchments. Many freshwater species can thus only respond to warming in-situ. In fishes, fine-tuning of body temperatures can be through ‘behavioural thermoregulation’, where individuals use microhabitats that provide their preferred thermal conditions, assisted by rivers providing highly heterogeneous thermal environments. There is, however, a substantial knowledge gap on how freshwater fish are altering their behaviour and habitat utilisation in rivers that are warming due to climate change, and how this confers resilience to populations from the damaging effects of temperature increases. Through strong reciprocal knowledge transfer, and high complementarity between all participants and the proposed research, the research quantifies the extent to which the behavioural thermoregulation of river fishes is governed by specific phenotypes within a pace-of-life-syndrome that provides vulnerable populations with inherent resilience to climate change. The Action delivers innovative and novel research by bringing together a highly talented researcher with substantial knowledge in freshwater fish ecology with a European research group with exceptional expertise in fish telemetry and behaviour, and microclimate ecology. The high complementarity of all participants enables use of state-of-the-art and innovative approaches to develop novel predictive models for quantifying the resilience of climatically vulnerable species to global temperature changes.Status
CLOSEDCall topic
MSCA-IF-2019Update Date
28-04-2024
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