Within- and Trans-Generational Environmental Adaptation to Climate Change: Perspectives and New Challenges

Naim M Bautista,Amélie Crespel

doi:10.3389/fmars.2021.729194

Abstract

The current and projected impacts of climate change are shaped by unprecedented rates of change in environmental conditions. These changes likely mismatch the existing coping capacities of organisms within-generations and impose challenges for population resilience across generations. To better understand the impacts of projected scenarios of climate change on organismal fitness and population maintenance, it is crucial to consider and integrate the proximate sources of variability of plastic and adaptive responses to environmental change in future empirical approaches. Here we explore the implications of considering: (a) the variability in different time-scale events of climate change; (b) the variability in plastic responses from embryonic to adult developmental stages; (c) the importance of considering the species life-history traits; and (d) the influence of trans-generational effects for individual survival and population maintenance. Finally, we posit a list of future challenges with questions and approaches that will help to elucidate knowledge gaps, to better inform conservation and management actions in preserving ecosystems and biodiversity.

Highlights

Global climate change is projected to continue modifying environmental conditions at unprecedented rates (Lüthi et al, 2008; IPCC, 2014)
As the number of studies on climate change increases, the complexity of its effects becomes more evident. These advances bring along new challenges for the scientific community, such as providing more ecologically relevant predictions that integrate natural-field conditions in experimental designs while overcoming technological and logistic constraints. In this perspective we focus on aquatic systems to first highlight the importance of considering different time scales of fluctuations in environmental conditions, for example, comparing the effects of short-term variations to long-term projected scenarios
A recent study on thermal tolerance in zebrafish artificially selected over six generations to increase or decrease their upper thermal tolerance, reported that these fish exhibited a slow rate of adaptation compared to the rate of global warming, suggesting that such tropical species may meet adaptive constraints when facing global warming (Morgan et al, 2020). Taken together these studies highlight the need for determining whether adaptation from existing genetic variation within populations would be sufficient to cope with the rate of change of climatic variables

Summary

Introduction

Global climate change is projected to continue modifying environmental conditions at unprecedented rates (Lüthi et al, 2008; IPCC, 2014). To better understand the impacts of projected scenarios of climate change on individual fitness, population maintenance, and species resilience, it is crucial to frame future experimental studies under an integrative approach that considers how the proximate environmental causes of individual variability that affect plastic responses can influence the ultimate functional and potential adaptive responses to environmental change.

Results

Conclusion