From medicine to butterflies and back again.

My research focuses on the current impacts of climate change on wildlife, from field-based work on butterflies to synthetic analyses of global impacts on a broad range of species across terrestrial and marine biomes. I work actively with governmental agencies and NGOs to help develop conservation assessment and planning tools aimed at preserving biodiversity in the face of climate change

Plants and climate change: complexities and surprises.

BACKGROUND: Anthropogenic climate change (ACC) will influence all aspects of plant biology over coming decades. Many changes in wild species have already been well-documented as a result of increased atmospheric CO2 concentrations, warming climate and changing precipitation regimes. A wealth of available data has allowed the use of meta-analyses to examine plant-climate interactions on more sophisticated levels than before. These analyses have revealed major differences in plant response among groups, e.g. with respect to functional traits, taxonomy, life-history and provenance. Interestingly, these meta-analyses have also exposed unexpected mismatches between theory, experimental, and observational studies. SCOPE: We reviewed the literature on species' responses to ACC, finding ∼42 % of 4000 species studied globally are plants (primarily terrestrial). We review impacts on phenology, distributions, ecophysiology, regeneration biology, plant-plant and plant-herbivore interactions, and the roles of plasticity and evolution. We focused on apparent deviations from expectation, and highlighted cases where more sophisticated analyses revealed that unexpected changes were, in fact, responses to ACC. CONCLUSIONS: We found that conventionally expected responses are generally well-understood, and that it is the aberrant responses that are now yielding greater insight into current and possible future impacts of ACC. We argue that inconclusive, unexpected, or counter-intuitive results should be embraced in order to understand apparent disconnects between theory, prediction, and observation. We highlight prime examples from the collection of papers in this Special Issue, as well as general literature. We found use of plant functional groupings/traits had mixed success, but that some underutilized approaches, such as Grime's C/S/R strategies, when incorporated, have improved understanding of observed responses. Despite inherent difficulties, we highlight the need for ecologists to conduct community-level experiments in systems that replicate multiple aspects of ACC. Specifically, we call for development of coordinating experiments across networks of field sites, both natural and man-made

A climate for contemporary evolution

A new study of divergence in freshwater fish provides strong evidence of rapid, temperature-mediated adaptation. This study is particularly important in the ongoing debate over the extent and significance of evolutionary response to climate change because divergence has occurred in relatively few generations in spite of ongoing gene flow and in the aftermath of a significant genetic bottleneck, factors that have previously been considered obstacles to evolution. Climate change may thus be more likely to foster contemporary evolutionary responses than has been anticipated, and I argue here for the importance of investigating their possible occurrence

Using Ecological Modelling Tools to Inform Policy Makers of Potential Changes in Crop Distribution: An Example with Cacao Crops in Latin America

International audienceSpecies distribution models (SDM) is a powerful simulation tool that has become widely used in the ecological and agronomical sciences. The use of easily available presence data, global downscaled climate layers and software that can run on desktop computer has contributed to their popularity. The most used application is based on maximum entropy models that fit presence data to a series of environmental descriptors. SDM can be used to predict crop distribution under future conditions but the level of uncertainty of those models can be very high. The best use of these models is to be used as generators of hypothesis to be combined with other type of analysis

Takeoff temperatures in Melitaea cinxia butterflies from latitudinal and elevational range limits: a potential adaptation to solar irradiance

International audience1. This study provides evidence that a heliophilic butterfly, the Glanville fritillary (Melitaea cinxia) has adapted differently to environmental variation across latitudes and elevations.2. In cool air, basking M. cinxia orient themselves perpendicular to the sun's rays to gain heat and take off. During flight, solar heating is reduced because orientation perpendicular to the sun is no longer possible and convective cooling occurs. Consequently, M. cinxia have been shown to suffer net heat loss in flight, even in full sunshine. When flight duration is restricted in this way, the takeoff temperature becomes an important thermal adaptation.3. Using a thermal imaging camera, takeoff temperatures were measured in experimental butterflies. Butterflies from the northern range limit in Finland took flight at slightly hotter temperatures than butterflies from the southern limit in Spain, and much hotter than butterflies from the elevational limit (1900–2300 m) in the French Alps. Butterflies from low‐elevation populations in southern France also took off much hotter than did the nearby Alpine population.4. These results suggest that the influence of elevation is different from that of latitude in more respects than ambient temperature. Values of solar irradiance in the butterflies' flight season in each region show that insects from the coolest habitats, Finland and the Alps, experienced similar solar irradiance during basking, but that Finns experienced much lower irradiance in flight. This difference may have favored Finnish butterflies evolving higher takeoff temperatures than Alpine butterflies that also flew in cool air but benefited from more intense radiant energy after takeoff

Long Term Implications of Climate Change on Crop Planning

The effects of climate change have been much speculated on in the past few years. Consequently, there has been intense interest in one of its key issues of food security into the future. This is particularly so given population increase, urban encroachment on arable land, and the degradation of the land itself. Recently, work has been done on predicting precipitation and temperature for the next few decades as well as developing optimisation models for crop planning. Combining these together, this paper examines the effects of climate change on a large food producing region in Australia, the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area. For time periods between 1991 and 2071 for dry, average and wet years, an analysis is made about the way that crop mixes will need to change to adapt for the effects of climate change. It is found that sustainable crop choices will change into the future, and that large-scale irrigated agriculture may become unviable in the region in all but the wettest years

Genetic, ecological, behavioral and geographic differentiation of populations in a thistle weevil: implications for speciation and biocontrol

Because weevils are used as biocontrol agents against thistles, it is important to document and understand host shifts and the evolution of host-specificity in these insects. Furthermore, such host shifts are of fundamental interest to mechanisms of speciation. The mediterranean weevil Larinus cynarae normally parasitizes either one of two thistle genera, Onopordum and Cynara, being locally monophagous. In Sardinia, however, both host genera are used. We used three types of data to help understand this complex host use: (i) weevil attack rates on the two host genera among 53 different populations in Sardinia and nearby Corsica, (ii) host preference in a lab setting, and (iii) genetic (allozyme) differentiation among weevil populations exploiting the same or different hosts. Using a subset of populations from northern Sardinia, we attempted to relate interpopulation differences in host preference to gene flow among populations by comparing pairwise differences in oviposition preference (Qst) and in allozyme frequencies (Fst). Overall, Qst and Fst were positively correlated. Fst was positively correlated with geographic distance among pairs of populations using the same host, but not among different-host population pairs. As mating occurs on the hosts, this result suggests reinforcement. Genetic evidence indicates Cynara as the ancestral host of the weevils from both islands and our current studies suggest repeated attempts to colonize Onopordum, with a successful shift in Corsica and a partial shift in Sardinia. This scenario would explain why in Sardinia the level of attack was higher on Cynara than on Onopordum and why, when given a choice in the laboratory, Sardinian weevils preferred Cynara even when sampled from Onopordum. The lability of host shifts in L. cynarae supports caution in using these or related weevils as biocontrol agents of exotic thistles