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做出决策。这种能力需要清楚地了解生物体如何应对气候变化，以及这种反应是否可以扩大到人口水平并产生人口后果。该项目的重点是两个哨兵物种，流浪信天翁（Diomedea exulans）和黑眉信天翁（Thalassarche melanophris），生活在南大洋，并询问是否适应个人行为，这是生物对气候变化的最接近的反应，可以减轻人口下降。通过全面审查气候、个人获取资源的能力（即，觅食行为）和种群动态，这个项目将提高我们对种群恢复力的途径的理解。此外，根据最先进的建模技术，将适应性进化，该项目将导致人口趋势的预测和人口的持续性在未来的预测。然后，预测将直接提交给参与保护这些物种的国际机构，寻求为正在进行的保护工作提供信息，包括海洋保护区的发展。该奖项还将培训下一代科学家，使他们能够作为参与学者直接与政策制定者合作。觅食努力的适应性变化有可能缓解气候变化下的人口下降。令人惊讶的是，我们对觅食努力与个体适应度以及种群动态之间联系的理解仍然存在很大差距。该项目旨在了解和预测觅食努力的可塑性和进化适应如何通过生态-进化-人口方法限制受气候威胁的海鸟物种的种群下降。该项目依赖于个体水平的经验数据的身体状况，觅食行为，人口统计率和血统收集的两种信天翁生活在南大洋：流浪信天翁（Diomedea exulans）和黑眉信天翁（Thalassarche melanophris）。该项目将首先评估气候变化，身体状况，觅食努力，个人健身和种群动态之间的机械联系。然后，利用最先进的生态进化矩阵人口模型加上气候情景，该项目将导致预测生态进化动态和未来人口趋势的气候变化和适应性进化。该奖项将汇集气候预测和生物及种群生态学领域，以改变我们对自然气候变异性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NSF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.