Eco-Evolutionary dynamics under global change: from phenotype to evolving metacommunity structure

Eco-evolutionary dynamics, in which evolution impacts ecological processes, can strongly affect predictions of responses to global change. The phenotype is key to the concept, as it mediates an individual’s responses to environmental change, interactions among organisms, community composition and ecosystem function. Using the water flea Daphnia, its microbiome and its damselfly predator Ischnura, and their responses to global change (more specifically, climate change, pollution and toxic cyanobacteria) as a model system, we will (1) quantify the relative importance of genotype, microbiome and environment in determining key phenotypic traits, (2) quantify the impact of intraspecific trait variation and its determining components on predator-prey interactions, community assembly and ecosystem features, and (3) test the hypothesis that eco-evolutionary interactions at both the level of the microbiome and of host individuals impact (meta)community and ecosystem features in (semi)natural settings.

Keywords:global change, eco-evolutionary dynamics, evolutionary ecology, climate change

Disciplines:Microbiology, Systems biology, Laboratory medicine, Geology, Aquatic sciences, challenges and pollution, Animal biology