Climate warming and the evolution of morphotypes in a reptile

Lepetz, Virginie; Massot, M.; Chaine, Alexis S.; Clobert, Jean

doi:10.1111/j.1365-2486.2008.01761.x

Cited by 50 publications

(72 citation statements)

References 61 publications

(107 reference statements)

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“…The end result is that in high quality habitat (humid ones) climate warming has increased the net productivity (more food) and enlarged the activity season (more time), which in turn has increased feeding efficiency and hence individual growth, fecundity and survival. Interestingly, dispersal rates (emigration as well as immigration) negatively correlated with climate warming in at least one of these populations [76,77]. This result fits quite well the climatic scenario described above: high quality habitats appear of even better quality with climate warming, while poor quality habitats display the opposite trend.…”

Section: Lizardssupporting

confidence: 81%

The pros and cons of applying the movement ecology paradigm for studying animal dispersal

2014

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Understanding how dispersal movements are motivated and executed is the core business of dispersal evolutionary ecology, which is an active research field in environmental sciences. However, recent advances in dispersal research have not yet been confronted to the movement ecology paradigm (MEP) that was introduced to unify the study of all types of movements of all organisms. Here we aim at doing this exercise to investigate if the MEP is sufficiently general to provide sound predictions on dispersal causes, modalities and consequences. We begin by briefly summarizing the main concepts of the MEP that are relevant to our analysis. A part of some examples, many studies focusing on animal movements share a common, two step procedures: (1) record movement paths, and (2) test post-hoc functional assumptions to identify the relationships between the four basic components listed above. Then we present some important results from dispersal evolutionary ecology research. Next we turn to two groups of model organisms (butterflies and lizards), in which dispersal has been thoroughly studied in the field for decades. These organisms have contrasted dispersal modes: the causes of dispersal are mainly related to the social context in lizards, whereas they are mainly dependent on the environmental context in butterflies. Lizards disperse most often once in their life soon after birth, whereas butterflies generally disperse all over their adult life. We investigate if and how the MEP provides an added value to the study of dispersal on these organisms. Although the MEP is in principle encapsulates almost every variation acting on movement, its ability to incorporate variation in anything else than pure movement trajectories appears to be mixed: dispersal is extremely phenotype-and context-dependent, which rends difficult the use of the MEP as an operational tool to incorporate variation across individuals and situations. We propose that a mixed approach combining the Eulerian and Lagrangian viewpoints could deal with this high dispersal variability. We conclude by providing perspectives for the integration of ecological and evolutionary processes affecting dispersal into the MEP that could increase its efficiency to study dispersal.

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Section: Lizardssupporting

confidence: 81%

The pros and cons of applying the movement ecology paradigm for studying animal dispersal

2014

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“…However, this should have resulted in morphspecific temporal trends in the geographical coordinates of specimen collection, which were not observed in the present sample (electronic supplementary material). Second, any change in morph frequencies might be explained by selective emigration (Lepetz et al 2009) of pale-reddish individuals from the population or selective immigration of dark-reddish individuals, following range shifts occurring in nearby European populations. An extension of these analyses to the entire Palearctic population of scops owls could provide additional insights on this possibility.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Among phenotypic traits taken into account when studying animal responses to climate changes, intraspecific colour variation (i.e. colour polymorphism (CP); Gray & McKinnon 2007) has received little attention, except for two recent studies (Cameron & Pokryszko 2008;Lepetz et al 2009). This is surprising, since CP is a widespread phenomenon in many animal taxa, and colour morphs can be considered as phenotypic genetic markers whose fitness effects are related to various ecologically important factors (Roulin 2004).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This equilibrium between morphs (and in gene frequency) may be disrupted or shifted by environmental changes, among which climate changes may play a major role through their direct and indirect effects on fitness (Lepetz et al 2009). Differential survival of morphs because of climate variation could thus lead to an evolutionary change in the morph ratio.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Global changes and animal phenotypic responses: melanin-based plumage redness of scops owls increased with temperature and rainfall during the last century

et al. 2009

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The ecological effects of global climate changes include shifts of species' distribution and changes in migration strategies and phenotype. Colour polymorphism, which can be envisaged as a species' evolutionary response to alternating conditions or to a wide range of habitats, may be affected by climate changes as well. The scops owl (Otus scops) shows two main colour morphs, dark-and pale-reddish, as well as intermediate morphs. We investigated temporal trends in an index of plumage colour of Italian scops owls from museum collections (1870-2007). We found a significant increase in plumage redness over the last century, which was correlated with an increase in temperature and rainfall of the years before specimen collection. However, the temporal increase in plumage redness persisted after controlling for climatic variables, suggesting that other environmental factors could be involved. Our study indicates that ongoing climate changes might have either shifted the selective balance between colour morphs, or differentially affected migration and movement patterns of colour morphs.

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“…plasticity) should be more resilient to climate change [9,11]. Key questions are how can environmental cues modulate changes in the phenotype [16] and what constraints may limit the potential for plasticity to facilitate coping with changing environments [10,17].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hormonally mediated maternal effects, individual strategy and global change

Meylan¹,

Miles

Clobert

2012

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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102

108

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A challenge to ecologists and evolutionary biologists is predicting organismal responses to the anticipated changes to global ecosystems through climate change. Most evidence suggests that short-term global change may involve increasing occurrences of extreme events, therefore the immediate response of individuals will be determined by physiological capacities and life-history adaptations to cope with extreme environmental conditions. Here, we consider the role of hormones and maternal effects in determining the persistence of species in altered environments. Hormones, specifically steroids, are critical for patterning the behaviour and morphology of parents and their offspring. Hence, steroids have a pervasive influence on multiple aspects of the offspring phenotype over its lifespan. Stress hormones, e.g. glucocorticoids, modulate and perturb phenotypes both early in development and later into adulthood. Females exposed to abiotic stressors during reproduction may alter the phenotypes by manipulation of hormones to the embryos. Thus, hormone-mediated maternal effects, which generate phenotypic plasticity, may be one avenue for coping with global change. Variation in exposure to hormones during development influences both the propensity to disperse, which alters metapopulation dynamics, and population dynamics, by affecting either recruitment to the population or subsequent life-history characteristics of the offspring. We suggest that hormones may be an informative index to the potential for populations to adapt to changing environments.

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Climate warming and the evolution of morphotypes in a reptile

Cited by 50 publications

References 61 publications

The pros and cons of applying the movement ecology paradigm for studying animal dispersal

The pros and cons of applying the movement ecology paradigm for studying animal dispersal

Global changes and animal phenotypic responses: melanin-based plumage redness of scops owls increased with temperature and rainfall during the last century

Hormonally mediated maternal effects, individual strategy and global change

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