Understanding global change through life histories and ecology

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Rapid global change poses significant scientific challenges for evolutionary ecologists. Biodiversity underpins our life support; providing the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat and much more. The wealth of these ecosystem services is depreciating rapidly as human populations expand, prosper and change the face of the globe. Coastal oceans comprise only 18% of the Earth's surface yet support half the world's fish biodiversity and provide more than half of global primary production, global denitrification and carbonate deposition and most of the global fisheries catch. My proposal targets three fundamental questions directly related to the impacts of global change on current and future sustainability of coastal oceans. Overfishing and increasingly climate change are the main drivers of population decline, extinction, invasions and habitat loss. My proposal directly addresses three big questions relevant to understanding the causes and consequences of biodiversity change at large spatial scales. (1) The overwhelming majority of species remain unknown, given the paucity of knowledge can we use life history theory and the links between life histories and extinction risk to prioritize potentially vulnerable species, specifically sharks and rays, for assessment and conservation? (2) Climate change has brought forward springtime, advancing the flowering of plants and blooming of phytoplankton by several weeks. What are the population consequences of the potential mismatch between the timing, intensity and duration of marine plankton blooms for the survival of marine fish larvae and which fish life history strategies are most vulnerable to climate mismatching? (3) How can we predict the effects of fishing and climate change on species richness at ecosystem-scales, especially since the majority of species remain unknown to science? I will address these questions using comparative 'meta-analysis' of global compilations of information from libraries, fisheries agencies and ocean-observing satellites combined with local-scale analyses of food web structure and function in three ecosystems: British Columbia intertidal shores and adjacent kelp forests, BC central coast salmon streams and Fijian coral reefs.