Special Issue "The Adaptive Responses of Wildlife to Climate Change"
A special issue of Animals (ISSN 2076-2615). This special issue belongs to the section "Wildlife".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 September 2021.
Special Issue Editors
Interests: adaptation (behavioural, physiological and genetic); individual response heterogeneity, activity and energetics; sensitive periods; life-history vulnerabilities; weather variability
Interests: behavioural and physiological plasticity in changing environments; impact of environmental conditions on communicative signal evolution; fitness trade-offs; behavioural, physiological and genetic adaptations to pathogen avoidance
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Rapid climate change stresses populations, species, and ecosystems, risking regional extinctions and global biodiversity loss. Nevertheless, animals are evolved to have some capacity to respond to variability in their environment. For this Special Issue, we welcome articles focusing on behavioural, physiological, and genetic adaptability to climate change and ensuing environmental change. We invite both conceptual and applied contributions, where understanding the intrinsic mechanisms underlying species adaptability is vital to future policy and management. Particularly, we encourage work looking at individual response heterogeneity; i.e., whether some members of a population exhibit strategies better aligned with changed conditions. Articles addressing (in)ability to cope with increased weather variability, and not just warming trends, are of especial interest. We also welcome articles investigating the indirect, or cascade, effects of climate change on animal populations; for example, effects on hibernation strategies, parasites and disease epidemiology, or habitat and food availability. Ultimately, we intend this Special Issue to move the dial from purely associative studies toward those describing mechanistic responses that provide insight into defined risk factors, shifting the paradigm from alarm to action.
Dr. Chris Newman
Prof. Christina Buesching
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All papers will be peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Animals is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- adaption to climate change
- individual response heterogeneity
- sensitive periods
- life-cycle vulnerabilities
- weather variability
- management responses to climate change
Planned Papers
The below list represents only planned manuscripts. Some of these manuscripts have not been received by the Editorial Office yet. Papers submitted to MDPI journals are subject to peer-review.
Title: Individual Mechanical Energy Expenditure Regimens Vary Seasonally with Weather, Sex, Age, and Body Condition in a Generalist Carnivore Population: Support for Tactical Diversity
Authors: Julius G. Bright Ross,1 Andrew Markham,2 Michael J. Noonan,3 Christina D. Buesching,3,4 Erin Connolly,5 Denise W. Pallett,6 David W. Macdonald,1 and Chris Newman1,4
Affiliation: 1. Wildlife Conservation Research Unit, Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, The Recanati-Kaplan Centre, Tubney House, Abindgon Rd, Tubney, OX13 5QL, UK
2. Department of Computer Science, University of Oxford, Wolfson Building, Parks Road, Oxford, OX2 3QD, UK
3. The Irving K. Barber School of Arts and Sciences, The University of British Columbia, Okanagan campus, Kelowna, BC, Canada
4. Cook’s Lake Farming Forestry and Wildlife Inc (Ecological Consultancy), Queens County, Nova Scotia, Canada
5. Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford, Oxford, U.K.
6. UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, Wallingford, OX10 8BB, U. K.
Abstract: Diverse individual energy-budgeting tactics within wild populations enable resilience to natural fluctuations in food availability and expenditure costs, and have been proposed to buffer populations against rapid anthropogenic change. Although substantial inter-individual heterogeneity in activity-derived energy expenditure has been documented in wild populations, it is important to differentiate between responses to the environment and inter-individual differences stemming from intrinsic constraints. We use tri-axial accelerometer deployments across two years, complemented by a yearlong diet analysis, to investigate how overall dynamic body acceleration (ODBA, a measure of activity intensity) and ‘Activity’ (above an ODBA threshold) varies between individuals across three seasons in a high-density population of European badgers (Meles meles). Weather (including wind speed) affected badger Activity and ODBA according with predictors of earthworm food resource availability and potential for cooling effects. In spring, maximal ODBA occurred with intermediate rainfall and temperature values, suggesting that badgers traded off foraging success against thermoregulatory losses. Crucially, ODBA plasticity to temperature depended on individual body condition. Thinner badgers maintained high spring ODBA irrespective of temperature, while fatter badgers reduced ODBA at colder temperatures. In summer, thin badgers modulated ODBA according to temperature, likely in response to super-abundant food supply. Moreover, between 35% (spring and summer) and 57% (autumn) of residual total daily ODBA related to inter-individual differences unexplained by top seasonal predictors, suggesting within-season activity phenotypes. We propose that this diversity among individual energy expenditure profiles may contribute to population resilience under rapid environmental change.
Title: Weather and Social Factors Affect Hormone Levels in the European Badger (Meles meles)
Authors: Sugianto NA 1,4*, Newman C 1,2, Macdonald DW 1 & Buesching CD 2,3
Affiliation: 1 Wildlife Conservation Research Unit, Lady Margaret Hall Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.
2 Cook’s Lake Farming Forestry and Wildlife Inc (Ecological Consultancy), Queens County, Nova Scotia, Canada.
3 Department of Biology, Irving K. Barber Faculty of Sciences, The University of British Columbia, Okanagan, Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada.
4 School of Biosciences, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK.
Abstract: Animals in the wild continually experience changes in the environmental and social conditions, which they respond to with behavioural, physiological and morphological adaptations based on individual phenotypic quality. During unfavourable environmental conditions, reproduction can be traded-off against self-maintenance, mediated through changes in reproductive hormone levels. Using the European badger (Meles meles) as a model species, here we examine how male testosterone and female oestrogens respond to weather (rainfall and temperature) and social (number of male and female adults per social group and total adults in the population) factors, as a function of age, weight and head-body length. Across seasons (spring, summer, autumn, winter), male testosterone levels correlated postively with rainfall and body weight, whereas female oestrone correlated positively with population density, but negatively with temperature. During the mating season (spring), heavier males (where badger food supply is weather dependent) had higher testosterone levels. Female oestrone levels were lower when temperatures were above normal and higher in longer body-length individuals. Female oestrone levels were also elevated at higher population density. We discuss the how climate change may influence the endocrine regulation of reproduction.