Abstract
The ability to deal with temperature-induced changes in interactions with contaminants and predators under global warming is one of the outstanding, applied evolutionary questions. For this, it is crucial to understand how contaminants will affect activity levels, predator avoidance and antipredator responses under global warming and to what extent gradual thermal evolution may mitigate these effects. Using a space-for-time substitution approach, we assessed the potential for gradual thermal evolution shaping activity (mobility and foraging), predator avoidance and antipredator responses when Ischnura elegans damselfly larvae were exposed to zinc in a common-garden warming experiment at the mean summer water temperatures of shallow water bodies at southern and northern latitudes (24 and 20°C, respectively). Zinc reduced mobility and foraging, predator avoidance and escape swimming speed. Importantly, high-latitude populations showed stronger zinc-induced reductions in escape swimming speed at both temperatures, and in activity levels at the high temperature. The latter indicates that local thermal adaptation may strongly change the ecological impact of contaminants under global warming. Our study underscores the critical importance of considering local adaptation along natural gradients when integrating biotic interactions in ecological risk assessment, and the potential of gradual thermal evolution mitigating the effects of warming on the vulnerability to contaminants.
Highlights
A key challenge for ecotoxicology is to understand how global warming will interact with contaminants to shape the in situ persistence of populations (Noyes et al 2009; Hooper et al 2013; Moe et al 2013)
We focused on two general activities, predator avoidance and a key antipredator trait of damselfly larvae (Stoks et al 2003; Gyssels and Stoks 2005; Stoks and McPeek 2006)
All three behavioural antipredator responses depended upon temperature (Predator cue 9 Temperature, Table 1, Fig. 1) but not in a consistent way: the response in walking activity and feeding strikes was stronger at 20°C, while the response in head orientations tended to be stronger at 24°C
Summary
A key challenge for ecotoxicology is to understand how global warming will interact with contaminants to shape the in situ persistence of populations (Noyes et al 2009; Hooper et al 2013; Moe et al 2013). A largely unresolved applied evolutionary question in this context is whether gradual thermal evolution will reduce or enlarge (through genetic trade-offs) the impacts of contaminants under global warming (Moe et al 2013). It is crucial to understand how contaminants will affect these behaviours under global warming and to what extent gradual thermal evolution may mitigate these effects
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