Convenors:
Philip Munday
(ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies/School of Marine
and Tropical Biology, James Cook University, Australia)
Plenary Speaker:
Philip Munday (ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies/School of Marine
and Tropical Biology, James Cook University, Australia)
Invited Speaker:
Robin Waples (Northwest Fisheries Science Center, USA)
Can organisms keep track with the environmental changes, and what is the evidence? Global change is affecting marine organisms through alterations of both the biotic and abiotic environment. Significant changes have been observed in relation to temperature, oxygen and other biogeochemical properties, but also changes in species composition and interactions are abundant. When organisms face altered environmental conditions they can acclimatize through phenotypic plasticity, migrate to favorable conditions or adapt genetically to the altered selection regime. In recent years, ecological evidence has been accumulating on changes in phenology, behavior and distribution of marine organisms, the latter including model-based forecasting. In contrast, there is a scarcity of genetically based evidence for evolution in response to climate change. This holds for both quantitative and molecular genetic investigations attempting to disentangle environmental and evolutionary effects on the observed trait changes. Insights of the speed and magnitude of evolutionary changes in marine organisms will be of paramount importance for understanding and predicting impacts of climate change in the sea and the associated ecosystem services. For this session we will focus on studies of the effect of climate change on marine organisms with evidence of evolutionary responses. We invite contributions using either molecular genetic or quantitative genetic methods, including long-term temporal genetic studies. Likewise, model-based predictions of species distributions, ecosystem changes and related bio-economical services, which take evolution into account, are encouraged.