Ecological consequences of climate change

Title:	Ecological consequences of climate change
SNIC Project:	SNIC 2014/1-28
Project Type:	SNAC Medium
Principal Investigator:	Bo Ebenman <boebe@ifm.liu.se>
Affiliation:	Linköpings universitet
Duration:	2014-01-30 – 2014-05-01
Classification:	10611
Keywords:

Abstract

Climate change is predicted to continue during this century and beyond, and visible effects are already evident in many ecological communities. Species can respond to climate change by dispersal to suitable habitats or by adaptation (plasticity or evolutionary changes). However, the combined effect of these processes on complex ecological communities is still unknown. This project aims to investigate how dispersal and evolution affect the response of ecological communities to climate change. Eco-evolutionary models – coupled differential equations describing the population dynamics of species abundances and evolutionary dynamics of species traits – will be used in order to investigate how ecological networks with different characteristics (link structure) will respond to climate change. Here, ecological parameters will be affected by climate conditions (temperature) and subject to evolutionary change. Realistic temperature time series will be generated in collaboration with SMHI.