Eco- en socio-evolutionaire dynamieken

Traditionally, ecological and evolutionary processes have largely beeed independent from each other. There is growing evidence, however, thatical and evolutionary dynamics can occur at the same time scale and can rongly interact with each other. Ignoring these interactions may amongst distort our view on human impact on natural ecosystems, for instance inntext of fisheries, land use, climate change, and the introduction of execies. In addition to the coupling of eco-evolutionary dynamics, we expelar interactions between social and evolutionary processes. Social behavd social structure may influence evolution, and evolution may shape socicture. Socio-evolutionary dynamics are expected in all organisms that shp behaviour, and will be especially important in species that form organcieties such as social insects and humans. Both eco-evolutionary and socutionary dynamics are therefore expected to be common and relevant to a nge of organisms and a broad array of fundamental and applied questions.p>The main objective of the research program is to obtain insight into tacteristics of eco- and socio-evolutionary dynamics and their impact on cal responses to environmental changes in a well-chosen set of model systrongly broadening the scale of earlier research. We will study eco-evoly dynamics in response to specific anthropogenic stressors (climate chanrient dynamics) in several key groups of aquatic organisms (zooplankton,c insects, fish, and their associated parasites) that belong to differenic levels, and thus firmly interact with each other through predator-preost-parasite interactions. We will also quantify eco-evolutionary interanbsp;in plant and microbial communities in response to changes in tempernd nutrient concentrations. For socio-evolutionary dynamics, we will notocus on social interactions within specific species (policing in sosects, quorum sensing in bacteria), but will also emphasize social inter that have impact on communities (communication in diverse microbianities, interspecific mutualistic interactions among plant, bacterial ant species). By studying eco- and socio-evolutionary dynamics on a broad f organisms within a consistent conceptual framework, we can explicitly the dynamics across groups to look for unifying principles. More specif we will identify key traits that impact the degree to which social, eco and evolutionary processes interact to impact ecosystem responses to nand anthropogenic stressors. To achieve these objectives, we willish a conceptual and technological platform for the integration of (metaity ecology, trait evolution and genomics across realistic spatial and t scales and across organism groups. Such a platform will be unique and wower breakthroughs in the integrated analysis of biological responses tonmental stress at very different levels of biological organization, rangm single genes to ecosystem services.

Trefwoorden:Dynamics