Collaborative Research: ORCC: Understanding Organismal Behavioral Responses to Climate Change to Forecast Eco-evolutionary Dynamics of Albatrosses Populations

全球变化的步伐日益加快，迫切需要了解和预测气候对人口的影响，以便为保护和资源管理作出决策。这种能力需要清楚地了解生物如何应对气候变化，以及这种反应是否可以扩大到人口水平并产生人口影响。本项目以生活在南大洋的两种前哨物种——流浪信天翁（Diomedea exulans）和黑眉信天翁（Thalassarche melanophris）为研究对象，研究个体行为的适应是否可以缓解种群数量的下降，而个体行为是生物体对气候变化的最直接反应。通过对气候、个体获取资源的能力（即觅食行为）和种群动态之间联系的全面考察，该项目将提高我们对种群恢复能力的预期途径的理解。此外，基于最先进的建模技术，将解释适应性进化，该项目将导致对人口趋势的预测和对未来人口持续性的预测。然后，预测结果将直接提交给参与保护这些物种的国际机构，以便为正在进行的保护工作提供信息，包括开发海洋保护区。该奖项还将培训下一代科学家，使他们能够作为参与研究的学者直接与政策制定者合作。在气候变化下，觅食努力的适应性变化有可能缓解种群减少。令人惊讶的是，我们对觅食努力与个体适应性以及种群动态之间的联系的理解仍然存在很大差距。本项目旨在通过生态-进化-人口统计学方法，了解和预测觅食努力的可塑性和进化适应如何限制气候威胁海鸟物种的数量下降。本项目依据的是生活在南大洋的两种信天翁——流浪信天翁（Diomedea exulans）和黑眉信天翁（Thalassarche melanophris）——的身体状况、觅食行为、人口统计率和系谱方面的个人经验数据。该项目将首先评估气候变化、身体状况、觅食努力、个体适应性和种群动态之间的机制联系。然后，利用最先进的生态进化矩阵种群模型与气候情景相结合，预测气候变化和适应进化下的生态进化动态和未来种群趋势。该奖项将把气候预测、生物和种群生态学领域结合起来，改变我们对自然气候变化和可预测性对生态进化动力学的相对重要性的理解。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The accelerating pace of global change creates urgency to understand and predict climate impacts on populations to enable decision-making for conservation and resource management. Such a capacity requires a clear understanding of how organisms respond to climate change and whether this response can scale up to the population level and have demographic consequences. This project focuses on two sentinel species, the wandering albatross (Diomedea exulans), and the black-browed albatross (Thalassarche melanophris), living in the Southern Ocean and asks whether adaptation in individual behavior, which is the most proximal response of organisms to climate change, can mitigate population declines. Through a comprehensive examination of the links between climate, individual capacity to acquire resources (i.e., foraging behaviors), and population dynamics, this project will improve our understanding of the pathways through which population resilience may be expected. Also, based on state-of-the-art modeling techniques that will account for adaptive evolution, this project will result in forecasts of population trend and predictions of population persistence in the future. Predictions will then be brought directly to the international bodies involved in conserving these species, seeking to inform ongoing conservation efforts, including the development of Marine Protected Areas. This award will also allow training of the next generation of scientists to work directly with policymakers as engaged scholars. Adaptive changes in foraging effort have a potential to mitigate population declines under climate change. Surprisingly, a large gap remains in our understanding of the links between foraging effort and individual fitness, as well as population dynamics. This project aims to understand and forecast how plasticity and evolutionary adaptation in foraging effort can limit population declines of climate-threatened seabird species through an eco-evo-demographic approach. This project relies on individual-level empirical data on body condition, foraging behaviors, demographic rates, and pedigree collected on two albatross species living in the Southern Ocean: the wandering albatross (Diomedea exulans) and the black-browed albatross (Thalassarche melanophris). This project will first assess the mechanistic linkages between climate change, body condition, foraging effort, individual fitness, and population dynamics. Then, using state-of-the-art eco-evolutionary matrix population models coupled with climatic scenarios, the project will result in forecasts of eco-evolutionary dynamics and future population trends under climate change and adaptive evolution. This award will bring together the fields of climate forecasting and organismal and population ecology to transform our understanding of the relative importance of natural climate variability and predictability for eco-evolutionary dynamics.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.