Linking species form, function and adaptations to freshwater habitats: implications for global change in aquatic systems.

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Freshwater ecosystems are of worldwide importance for maintaining biodiversity and the provision of a myriad of ecosystem services. Anthropogenic pressures are creating global shifts in freshwater permanency, increasing droughts in tropical and temperate regions and consequently species extinction rates and freshwater ecosystem degradations are increasing. Predicting freshwater ecosystem responses across landscapes and continents will be key in our ability to understand how these systems will develop under land-use and climate change. Functional biogeography is emerging as a promising field to develop such predictions, where the diversity of organismal forms and functions are put into a spatial-explicit context by linking responses of small and large-scale patterns of biodiversity to the environment. In the terrestrial realm, functional biogeography has bridged the gap between biodiversity gradients and biogeochemical cycles, providing a framework for underlying mechanisms driving ecosystem and biodiversity change. However, it is still unclear to what extent such a framework to aquatic organisms and how unique adaptations to life in water shape the functional biogeography of freshwater organisms. The long term goal of my research program is to understand and predict how freshwater ecosystems responses the global change, via their functional adaptations to life in water. Over the next 5 years, my research program will explore this goal through two complementary short-term objectives. Objective 1 is to develop a macroecology overview of aquatic plant form and function, both in an abstract functional trait space and across global environmental gradients. Objective 2 is to enhance our mechanistic understanding of the biogeographic constraints on trait variation when species undergo an abrupt ontogenetic change between an aquatic and terrestrial life form. Together, these objectives support the long-term goal of developing a conceptual understanding of how functional adaptations to life in water are distributed within and across landscapes. Describing the functional restrictions and uniqueness of freshwater species will allow us to specify when, why and how unique system specific approaches are needed when developing conservation priorities and action plans for freshwater ecosystems. Thereby, it will be possible to describe and quantify the actions needed if we are to reduce human impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem functioning in freshwater systems worldwide.