Agripop Friday Talks

Friday's Agripop Talk

07 June 2013 - 11:00 - 12:00 Salle Seminaire

Coupled dynamics of traits and populations in response to environmental change

Prof. Arpat Ozgul

Institute of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies, University of Zurich (Switzerland)

If the environment changes you better change, too -- in behaviour, appearance, size, etc. But how? And what are the time scales of these responses? Our invited speaker this week, Arpat Ozgul from the University of Zurich, will present us results form his recent and ongoing research on this topic.

Here, an abstract of the talk:

A major goal in population ecology is to predict how populations will respond to environmental change. Recent studies have highlighted rapid phenotypic changes accompanying and often preceding demographic regime shifts, indicating that a trait-based demographic approach can improve our ability to predict a population’s response to environmental change. 

Furthermore, these studies show that some species can adapt to environmental change more easily than others through a range of evolutionary and ecological mechanisms; understanding these differences is crucial for identifying species that are more susceptible. 

In this talk, I will present the links between the abiotic environment, population density, individual traits (such as body size) and demography using long-term data from two mammalian systems: Soay sheep and yellow-bellied marmots, and address the following questions: “How do populations respond demographically, ecologically and evolutionarily to environmental perturbations?”

And for the really keen and diligent ones, here a few papers relevant to the talk:

Ozgul A, Coulson T, Reynolds A, Cameron T, Benton T (2012) Population responses to perturbations: the importance of trait-based analysis illustrated through a microcosm experiment. American Naturalist

Ozgul A, Childs DZ, Oli MK, Armitage KB, Blumstein DT, Olson LE, Tuljapurkar S, Coulson S (2010) Coupled dynamics of body mass and population growth in response to environmental change. Nature

Ozgul A, Tuljapurkar S, Benton TG, Pemberton JM, Clutton-Brock TH, Coulson T (2009) The dynamics of phenotypic change and the shrinking sheep of St. Kilda. Science

Photo by Arpat Ozgul

Perhaps most importantly, Arpat will be around on Friday so there will be plenty of opportunities to interact with him - including during a:

  apero et soirée barbecue chez la riviere starting at around 18:00 in Chize. 

 Tous sont le bienvenus!

Apero et barbecue will be held here!

Finally, in case you wonder why the marmot is wearing a mask -- there is a long tradition of scientists engaging beyond the laboratory to try helping their communities (e.g. see here) and Arpat is a recent example. Whilst doing this, he even discovered a new species, the Chapulcu (G. chapullini): A gremlin species native to Anatolia. Spawns when wet, goes nuts when sprayed with pesticide ;-)