The impact of environmental variability on life history trade-offs: a multi scale approach

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My research program seeks to understand the ecological causes and evolutionary consequences of variation in reproductive success, longevity and life-history strategies. Understanding the links between environmental conditions experienced over the lifetime and fitness is central to the study of evolutionary biology. Adaptations may quickly become obsolete in a context of rapid climate change. Even within a single generation, the conditions experienced at a young age may differ from those experienced during adulthood. This topic is of foremost importance for Canadians, as our country is facing exceptionally high rates of environmental variation. I will use molecular ecology techniques, powerful quantitative genetics methods on pedigree and detailed longitudinal data on known individuals (such as age at primiparity, inter-birth intervals and age-specific survival) to better understand the dynamics of adaptation during ontogeny and across generations. My research program will focus on 1) quantifying how individual differences in physiology, morphology and behaviour affect fitness in interaction with environmental variation; 2) studying the relationship between early life conditions and lifetime fitness; and 3) determining the extent to which heritability of fitness is context-dependent. My research will be based on a longitudinal study of individually-marked wild Eastern chipmunks that are monitored since 2012 and on a long-term dataset of 800,000 pre-industrial humans from Québec that were born between 1608 and 1750. These systems are known to be very variable environmentally. Both offer much potential to perform longitudinal analyses on individuals and assemble pedigree for genetic analyses. These datasets offer a balanced approach to facilitate the success of my research program, relying on high quality data that are already collected and ready for analyses, but also contributing to growing datasets in the field and in the lab. Consequently, my research program will provide an ideal environment for the training of graduate students and provide insights about how environmental variation affect the evolutionary potential of populations, which is key to assess the vulnerability of populations to climate change.