Local adaptation and the potential effects of a contaminant on predator avoidance and antipredator responses under global warming: a space‐for‐time substitution approach

To fully comprehend and predict the impact of drivers of global change such as climate warming and pollution, integrated multi‐trait approaches are needed. As organismal traits are often correlated, responses to stressors are expected to induce coordinated changes in many traits. A promising framework to study this is the pace of life syndrome (POLS), which predicts the integration of life history, behavioral, and physiological traits along a fast‐slow continuum. Using an integrative multi‐trait approach, we evaluated the presence of a POLS both within and across latitudes and how POLS patterns are affected by warming and metal pollution. We studied this in Ischnura elegans damselfly larvae of replicated low‐ and high‐latitude populations that strongly differ in voltinism (three to four generations per year vs. one generation every two years) reared in a common‐garden experiment at two temperatures. Across latitudes, life history, behavior, and physiology covaried in accordance with the POLS, with the fast‐paced low‐latitude damselflies characterized by a fast growth rate, high activity, and more explorative and risk‐taking behavior, fast metabolic rate, and low investment in immune function (activity of phenoloxidase). This fast POLS strategy was associated with a higher sensitivity to metal exposure and a higher vulnerability to predation. Warming caused opposite responses between the latitudes consistent with differential thermal adaptation in growth rate, behavior, and oxidative stress parameters. Despite this, damselflies of both latitudes showed a consistent pattern in phenotypic correlations among traits that, moreover, was not affected by warming and metal exposure. Within latitudes, there was no full support for the POLS. More active larvae were more explorative and risk taking, which aligned with the fast‐slow life history axis, but less strong than at the across‐latitude level. Physiological traits were also integrated within latitudes, yet there was no unambiguous coupling with the fast‐slow life history continuum. The consistent syndrome structure, if underpinned by genetic correlations, may restrict the independent evolution of individual traits, yet may not necessarily constrain adaptive evolution of integrated trait sets. This is because the covariance pattern was to a large extent similar across latitudes and within latitudes, suggesting adaptive trait integration guiding adaptive evolution of trait sets along the fast‐slow continuum.

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“…A higher escape swimming speed of the French larvae (see Janssens et al. ) might have compensated for a high behavior‐mediated susceptibility.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pace of life syndrome under warming and pollution: integrating life history, behavior, and physiology across latitudes

Debecker

Stoks

2018

Ecological Monographs

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“…That the nZnO only affected the sugar content and not the fat and protein contents matches another study on D. magna showing that the sugar content was more sensitive to zinc compared to protein and fat contents (Muyssen, Janssen, & Bossuyt, 2002). We hypothesize that a suppressed food intake, a common response to metal exposure both in Daphnia (Lari, Gauthier, Mohaddes, & Pyle, 2017; Zhu, Chang, & Chen, 2010) and other species (Hoseini, Rajabiesterabadi, & Kordrostami, 2016; Janssens, Dinh, Debecker, Bervoets, & Stoks, 2014), may have driven the reduced energy storage and contributed to the higher toxicity of nZnO at 24°C. Accordingly, as D. magna can accumulate a considerable amount of zinc from its food (Memmert, 1987), a suppressed food intake may also explain the absence of a higher internal zinc burden at 24°C.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Thermal evolution offsets the elevated toxicity of a contaminant under warming: A resurrection study in Daphnia magna

Zhang

Jansen

Meester

et al. 2018

Evolutionary Applications

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Synergistic interactions between temperature and contaminants are a major challenge for ecological risk assessment, especially under global warming. While thermal evolution may increase the ability to deal with warming, it is unknown whether it may also affect the ability to deal with the many contaminants that are more toxic at higher temperatures. We investigated how evolution of genetic adaptation to warming affected the interactions between warming and a novel stressor: zinc oxide nanoparticles (nZnO) in a natural population of Daphnia magna using resurrection ecology. We hatched resting eggs from two D. magna subpopulations (old: 1955–1965, recent: 1995–2005) from the sediment of a lake that experienced an increase in average temperature and in recurrence of heat waves but was never exposed to industrial waste. In the old “ancestral” subpopulation, exposure to a sublethal concentration of nZnO decreased the intrinsic growth rate, metabolic activity, and energy reserves at 24°C but not at 20°C, indicating a synergism between warming and nZnO. In contrast, these synergistic effects disappeared in the recent “derived” subpopulation that evolved a lower sensitivity to nZnO at 24°C, which indicates that thermal evolution could offset the elevated toxicity of nZnO under warming. This evolution of reduced sensitivity to nZnO under warming could not be explained by changes in the total internal zinc accumulation but was partially associated with the evolution of the expression of a key metal detoxification gene under warming. Our results suggest that the increased sensitivity to the sublethal concentration of nZnO under the predicted 4°C warming by the end of this century may be counteracted by thermal evolution in this D. magna population. Our results illustrate the importance of evolution to warming in shaping the responses to another anthropogenic stressor, here a contaminant. More general, genetic adaptation to an environmental stressor may ensure that synergistic effects between contaminants and this environmental stressor will not be present anymore.

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“…Our results lead us to agree with other recent metaanalyses and reviews: to understand and predict the effects of climate change and other anthropogenic forms of global change on ecosystem structure, function, and services, the complexity of experimental and modeling studies must increase to more closely reflect natural conditions [10,66]. The experimental challenge will be to account for a diverse array of factors [7], including the two we have highlighted in our meta-analysis: the interactions between climate change variables and the direct and indirect interactions that permeate food webs [1,2,67]. Also, future studies should 1) run longer to better understand the evolutionary and demographic stability of altered trophic interactions over multiple generations [23,68], 2) examine food webs in different kinds of ecosystems (the large majority to date have been terrestrial), 3) examine trophic relationships across more than simple two-and three-level linear interactions and beyond plantinsect feeding scenarios, 4) focus on more climate change variable pairings beyond CO 2 × temperature and CO 2 × O 3 (by far the most studied variable pairings to date), and 5) examine the role of body size and movement capabilities in determining the response of trophic relationships to interacting climate change variables.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Interactive effects of multiple climate change variables on trophic interactions: a meta-analysis

Rosenblatt

Schmitz

2014

Clim Chang Responses

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Background: Climate change is expected to simultaneously alter many of the abiotic qualities of ecosystems as well as biotic interactions, especially trophic interactions. However, research to date has mostly focused on elucidating the effects of single climate change variables on individual species. Here, we use established meta-analysis techniques to synthesize the existing literature on the interactive effects of multiple climate change variables on trophic interactions.

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Local adaptation and the potential effects of a contaminant on predator avoidance and antipredator responses under global warming: a space‐for‐time substitution approach

Cited by 37 publications

References 65 publications

Pace of life syndrome under warming and pollution: integrating life history, behavior, and physiology across latitudes

Pace of life syndrome under warming and pollution: integrating life history, behavior, and physiology across latitudes

Thermal evolution offsets the elevated toxicity of a contaminant under warming: A resurrection study in Daphnia magna

Interactive effects of multiple climate change variables on trophic interactions: a meta-analysis

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