Sex in the Sea - Environmental effects on sexual selection in copepods and its feedback on population dynamics

近年来，越来越多的研究表明，在许多系统中，进化和生态过程可以在相似的时间尺度上发生。拟议的项目旨在探讨生物和非生物环境对海洋桡足类性别选择的影响及其对种群动态的潜在反馈。通过结合实验室和建模技术，我们将研究a）海洋酸化和B）配偶可用性/性别比如何影响配偶搜索和交配行为。我们的假设是，pH值的降低限制了桡足类动物交配检测的信息素踪迹的功能，与鱼类中已知的效果相当。除了限制嗅觉交流，种群密度和性别比例的变化也会影响性选择的强度，最终影响后代的生存能力。这些因素对种群动态很重要，但在性选择理论中往往被忽视。该项目的重点是桡足类，这是海洋食物网中一个庞大而重要的群体，在那里，性选择最近被认为是一种对丰度和种群动态有影响的调节机制。因此，这里研究的个体水平的过程是相关的生态系统水平。

In recent years a growing number of studies show that evolutionary and ecological processes can occur at similar time scales in many systems. The proposed project aims to explore the influence of the biotic and abiotic environment on sexual selection in marine copepods and its potential feedback on population dynamics. By combining laboratory and modeling techniques we will examine how a) ocean acidification and b) mate availability/sex ratio influences mate search and mating behaviour. Our hypothesis is that a reduction in the pH constrains the functioning of pheromone trails for mate detection in copepods, comparable to effects known in fish. In addition to constrained olfactory communication, changes in population density and sex ratio can also affect the intensity of sexual selection and finally offspring viability. These factors are important for population dynamics, but are often neglected in the theory of sexual selection. The project focuses on copepods a large and important group within the marine food web where sexual selection is recently acknowledged as a regulatory mechanism with bearings on abundance and population dynamics. Therefore, individual-level processes studied here are relevant at the ecosystem level.