Abstract
The rate and absolute magnitude of climate change in the last 150 years is expected to be greater than that of the last four million years and, as such, can be considered a human-mediated and planet-wide experiment in unusually rapid selection. Coastal ecosystems in general, and intertidal systems in particular, are likely to be profoundly affected by climate change because human impacts have already undermined their resilience and capacity to buffer additional environmental stresses. Global environmental change invokes two basic responses of organisms: ecological (dispersal, phenotypic plasticity) and evolutionary (genetic change), both of which are integrated into a "move, be plastic or evolve" strategy. The specific aim of the proposed research is to understand the responses to increasing temperature of the intertidal seaweed Fucus serratus, an ecologically important ecosystem engineer in the North Atlantic rocky intertidal zone. A combination of spatial modelling (Ecological Niche Modelling), manipulative (transcriptomics) and natural experiments (genome scans) will disentangle the effects of range shifting, phenotypic plasticity and selection as a response to increasing temperatures associated with global warming. The proposal will contribute toward a predictive model of climate induced changes in coastal ecosystems and appropriate societal responses.
Norway