Sex in the Sea - Environmental effects on sexual selection in copepods and its feedback on population dynamics

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In recent years a growing number of studies show that evolutionary and ecological processes can occur at similar time scales in many systems. The proposed project aims to explore the influence of the biotic and abiotic environment on sexual selection in marine copepods and its potential feedback on population dynamics. By combining laboratory and modeling techniques we will examine how a) ocean acidification and b) mate availability/sex ratio influences mate search and mating behaviour. Our hypothesis is that a reduction in the pH constrains the functioning of pheromone trails for mate detection in copepods, comparable to effects known in fish. In addition to constrained olfactory communication, changes in population density and sex ratio can also affect the intensity of sexual selection and finally offspring viability. These factors are important for population dynamics, but are often neglected in the theory of sexual selection. The project focuses on copepods a large and important group within the marine food web where sexual selection is recently acknowledged as a regulatory mechanism with bearings on abundance and population dynamics. Therefore, individual-level processes studied here are relevant at the ecosystem level.