Elucidating the differences in the demographic responses of marine and terrestrial species to global change

Dr Pol Capdevila¹, Dr Maria Beger², Dr Gwilym Rowlands¹, Dr Rob Salguero-Gomez¹

¹Department of Zoology, Oxford University, Oxford, United Kingdom, ²School of Biology, Faculty of Biological Sciences, University of Leeds, Leeds, United Kingdom

Global change is causing a dramatic rate of species loss. There are many documented examples of extinction in terrestrial systems. Yet, despite established trends of species decline in many marine systems (e.g. corals, kelps), there are few examples of extinctions within the marine realm. This difference between marine and terrestrial systems could be either due to the lack of reliable marine data from which estimate current and future extinctions, or due to fundamental differences in marine and terrestrial species response to global change. To address this timely and urgent question, we used open-access databases, including biogeographic, phylogenetic and demographic information for over 700 marine and terrestrial species from around the globe and across the tree of life. We developed a hierarchical Bayesian framework to examine how populations are expected to fare under current and future climatic scenarios. We decomposed the effects of mean and variance in climatic changes to population trends using stochastic elasticities of transient dynamics. We also quantified those demographic processes (e.g. survival, development, reproduction) that provide higher resilience to species before climate change. Overall, our results will prove fundamental not only to understand the current trends of biodiversity loss, but also to determine which demographic processes must become the target of conservation actions in marine environments.

Biography:

Pol finished his PhD in 2017 at the University of Barcelona, were he tryed to understand the population dynamics and the impacts of global change in different benthic marine species, with special interest in Mediterranean corals and seaweeds. In 2018 he was awared with a postodoctoral fellowship to pursue his research at the University of Oxford. There he studies the differences in the life history strategies between marine and terrestrial species and their response to global change.