From genes to environmental change - the spatial ecology of a tropical seabird

虽然现在人们普遍认为，人类引起的全球环境变化对生物多样性和相关生态系统具有重要影响，但我们对所涉生态机制的了解仍然相当贫乏。在种群内部，环境变化的影响取决于个体适应性如何被改变，这反过来又决定了生命率和种群增长。这一过程的一个关键方面是个人在空间和时间上暴露于环境变化的方式，以及这种暴露对个人健康的影响。在这里，我们建议探索这一重要问题的热带海鸟，圆岛海燕的空间生态工作。这是一个有趣的模型系统，因为西印度洋圆岛上的种群繁殖实际上是一个物种复合体，包括一个大西洋物种，两个来自南太平洋的物种和种间杂交种。这意味着种群由具有一系列遗传和地理起源的个体组成，这些遗传和地理起源由其进化历史决定。在繁殖期间，所有个体都暴露在西印度洋不断变化的环境条件下。这些变化具有潜在的重要性，因为繁殖与该地区海面温度（SST）的季节性下降相吻合，并且有证据表明SST正在增加。在非繁殖期，我们假设个体暴露于与其遗传（地理）起源相关的变化，但我们缺乏与起源相关的大规模分布模式的数据，这些数据将使我们能够将环境变化与个体的适应性联系起来。我们提出的项目旨在通过描述一个人的起源（因此其进化历史）如何影响分布模式，暴露于环境变化，以及其在个人和人口水平的后果，提供对环境变化的影响的详细了解。为了做到这一点，我们将把现有的长期的、关于人口统计学的个人数据集与关于个人基因型、表型和分布模式的新数据结合在一起。我们提出的工作是新颖的，因为它将使我们了解个体基因组的巨大差异如何影响其暴露于环境变化及其后果，并以这种方式将进化生物学和应用生态学结合在一起。

Although it is now widely accepted that human-induced global environmental change has important implications for biodiversity and associated ecosystems, our understanding of the ecological mechanisms involved remains rather poor. Within populations, the impact of environmental change depends on how individual fitness is re-shaped by change, which in turn determines vital rates and population growth. A key aspect of this process is the way individuals are exposed to environmental change in space and time, and the implications of this exposure for individual fitness. Here we propose to explore this important issue by working on the spatial ecology of a tropical seabird, the Round Island petrel. This is an interesting model system because the population breeding on Round Island in the Western Indian Ocean is actually a species complex, consisting of one Atlantic species, two species from the South Pacific, and inter-specific hybrids. This means the population consists of individuals with a range of genetic and hence geographic origins dictated by its evolutionary history. Whilst breeding, all individuals are exposed to changing environmental conditions in the Western Indian Ocean. These changes are potentially significant because breeding coincides with a seasonal drop in sea surface temperatures (SSTs) in the region, and there is evidence that SSTs are increasing. During the non-breeding period, we presume individuals are exposed to changes associated with their genetic (geographical) origin, but we lack data on large-scale distribution patterns in relation to origin that would allow us to link environmental change with an individual's fitness. Our proposed project is designed to provide a detailed understanding of the impacts of environmental change by describing how an individual's origin (and hence its evolutionary history) affects distribution patterns, exposure to environmental change, and its consequences at the individual and population-levels. To do this, we will bring together an existing long-term, individual dataset on demography, with new data on individual genotypes, phenotypes and distribution patterns. Our proposed work is novel because it will allow us to understand how gross differences in an individual's genome might affect its exposure to environmental change and its consequences, and in this way brings together evolutionary biology and applied ecology.