Global Change Ecology

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Understanding how biological diversity is responding to the accelerating rate of global environmental change is one of the key scientific challenges of the 21st century. Despite many observations of ecological responses to climate change, we lack a predictive understanding that can guide adaptive management and decision-making. This challenge sets Prof. Sunday's research agenda: she uses data science, theory, and controlled experiments to connect physiological responses of organisms to processes that regulate population dynamics, ecological interactions, and community change, to better predict biotic responses to the climate crisis. Prof. Sunday's vision for the next five years is to develop 3 interrelated research axes that will address key challenges at the forefront of climate change biogeography, summarized into three interrelated research axes.Research Axis 1 is to develop and improve the use of environmental DNA metabarcoding (eDNA) to track essential biodiversity variables in our oceans and transform the temporal and spatial resolution across which we can observed biodiversity change. Research Axis 2 is to improve our skill in predicting climate-induced species range shifts, by leveraging existing data on distributional, physiological, ecological, and adaptive traits of species.Research Axis 3 is to test theoretical predictions of how competitive and trophic interactions change as a function of temperature, to advance generalizable theory and more predictive understanding.This is work is transformative as it greatly increases our observational capacities of marine biodiversity, and fills key gaps in understanding on how species' distributions are limited by climate, providing new predictive tools. Prof. Sunday's mode of research makes it novel: she connects across disciplines and systems, approaches questions from multiple angles, and seeks commonality through theory and broad comparative analyses.The proposed research will provide numerous opportunities for students and postdocs to train in a vibrant, interdisciplinary environment and to develop partnerships with conservation agencies to co-design research for more impactful outcomes