Potential responses to climate change: from genotype to community level

Project description

This project will answer the following questions which are related to climate change: 1) Is there less genetic variation at range margins compared to the centre of a species’ distribution? 2) Are northern species more vulnerable to climate change than southern species? 3) How do community interactions affect the predicted life history response obtained from single species laboratory experiments?

Understanding genetic variation is important because it provides information on how organisms might respond to environmental changes. The answers on the 3 questions will provide conservation biologist with information on which species and populations that are the most vulnerable to climatic change. It will also tell conservation biologist how realistic laboratory experiments simulating climate change are, and if it is possible to extrapolate predicted life history responses from laboratory to natural community systems.

The project consists of a mixture of laboratory and semi-field experiments. The focus is on life history traits in dragonflies, but the results obtained are general for conservation issues of aquatic invertebrates. Among species comparisons (southern, central and northern species) as well as within species comparisons (southern, central and northern populations) will be made. 11 dragonfly species are protected by the European Bern convention, and 22 are on the red list of Europe. An alarming pattern is that northern dragonflies seem to have contracted their range.