Effects of Climate-Change Associated Stressors on Fish Social Behaviours

群体生活是许多动物觅食、躲避捕食者、迁徙和繁殖的关键，但在管理环境变化后果的背景下，群体生活大多被忽视了。鱼类经常被用作研究动物集体行为和环境压力对变温动物的影响的模式分类群。它们遍布全球的水生栖息地，扮演着捕食者和猎物的关键角色，并表现出各种各样的社会行为。PI Killen最近的研究表明，能量代谢和运动能力的个体差异对鱼类群体生活的成本和收益很重要，并将个体动物的行为与群体行为联系起来。新陈代谢和社会行为之间的关系还表明，温度变化和缺氧——水生环境中气候变化的两个后果——可能对群体生活产生深远的影响。迄今为止，研究对气候变化的行为和生理反应的工作主要集中在孤立的动物身上，而没有探究个体层面的影响如何影响社会行为。相反，社会动态反馈如何影响表型和对环境变化的反应也是未知的。为了解决这些问题，拟议的项目将：(1)研究温度和缺氧如何影响个体动物及其社会群体之间的行为；(2)研究温度和缺氧对群体形成和功能的影响；(3)建立一个强大的群体行为运动模型，该模型可以应用于一系列环境条件和生态背景。通过采用创新的经验和理论方法，结合实验室和野外的行为和生理学，该项目将首次研究气候变化带来的热转移和缺氧如何影响社会行为。

Group living is key to foraging, predator-avoidance, migration, and reproduction in many animal species but has been mostly overlooked in the context of managing the consequences of environmental change. Fishes are frequently used as model taxa to study collective behaviour in animals, and the effects of environmental stressors on ectotherms. They occupy aquatic habitats across the globe, play key roles as both predators and prey, and display a variety of social behaviours. Recent studies by PI Killen have demonstrated that among-individual variation in energy metabolism and locomotor capacity are important to costs and benefits of group-living in fishes, and link behaviour of individual animals to group behaviour. Relationships between metabolism and social behaviour also suggest that temperature change and hypoxia - two consequences of climate change in aquatic environments - may have profound effects on group living. To date, work examining behavioural and physiological responses to climate change has focussed on isolated animals, without inquiry into how effects at the individual level may affect social behaviour. Conversely, how social dynamics feedback to influence phenotypes and responses to environmental change is also unknown. To address these issues, the proposed project will: (1) examine how temperature and hypoxia affect interplay between behaviour of individual animals and their social group; (2) investigate how temperature and hypoxia influence group formation and functioning; and (3) produce a robust movement model of group behaviour that can be applied to a range of environmental conditions and ecological contexts. By adopting innovative empirical and theoretical approaches and combining behaviour and physiology in the lab and field, this project will be the first to examine how thermal shifts and hypoxia brought on by climate change will affect social behaviour.