The evolution of stress tolerance in marine systems

• Applicant: Dr. Rolanda O' Connor
• Subject Area: Ecology and Biodiversity of Animals and Ecosystems, Organismic Interactions ; Animal Physiology and Biochemistry ; Evolution, Anthropology
• Term: from 2015 to 2018
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 276780299

Global environmental change has emerged as a major threat to almost all organisms on the planet. However, most organisms are also equipped with the ability to adapt to environmental change. Stress caused by global change will rarely be experienced as a single stress factor, but usually co-occur with other stressors. For instance, coastal marine environments are not only often polluted, but are also disturbed by increasingly extreme temperatures, salinity fluctuations and increases in water acidity. Stressors associated with global change will be experienced simultaneously and can act synergistically, so attempts to estimate the evolutionary capacity of marine systems requires a multi-stressor approach. Experimental approaches to test tolerance to multiple stressors have become common in the last decade. There is, however, a paucity of experiments that assess more than three stressors or test for realistic levels of stress. Quite often in experimental studies, organisms are exposed to predicted levels of stress, ignoring adaptation and acclimation. More fine-scaled dose-response studies are almost completely absent. To address this, I want to test the influence of five ecologically relevant stressors on the thermal tolerance of four marine invertebrate species. Attaining well-resolved temperature tolerance curves will require a high number of replicates to be meaningful. To achieve this, I will use a high throughput phenotyping array. We have begun to know more about genotypes as phenotypes, which is why I consider the expansion of our understanding of the phenotype and its plasticity under ecologically realistic stress conditions as relevant.

• DFG Programme: Research Fellowships
• International Connection: Australia
• Host: Professor Dr. Dustin Marshall