|
Marcel E. VISSER
NIOO-KNAW, Dept. of Animal Population
Biology, Centre for Terrestrial Ecology, NL
Title
Phenology and fitness in a warming world
Abstract
Climate change has led to shifts in phenology in many species distributed
widely across taxonomic groups. It is, however, unclear how we should
interpret these shifts without some sort of a yardstick: a measure that will
reflect how much in its environment caused by climate change. An appropriate
yardstick, by a first approximation, is the shift in the phenology of a
species' food abundance. I will review the few examples that are available,
ranging from birds to marine plankton. In almost all of these examples, the
phenology of the focal species shifts either too little or too much compared
to their yardstick. After this general review I will focus on the food chain
oak - winter moth - great tit / pied flycatcher and address three questions:
why has climate change disrupted the synchrony in this food chain, will
natural selection restore this disruption, and what are the population
consequences if this restoration does not, or at a too slow rate, occurs. I
will show that climate change alters correlations between weather variables
(early vs late spring temperatures etc) and that this leads to mistiming
rather than the increase in temperature per se. For natural selection to
restore this, both heritable variation and selection need to exists and I
will argue that the important variation is in the reaction norms of for
instance laying date vs temperature. As the response to selection is likely
to be too slow, especially in the vertebrates, which are strongly affected by
photoperiod, there will be population consequences as we have shown for the
pied flycatcher.
CV
Prof. Dr. Marcel E. Visser (1960) graduated
from Leiden University in 1987, and continued there as a PhD student in the
Animal Ecology Group for four years, working on the life-history of insect
parasitoids.
After his PhD he obtained an EC Science
Programme Fellowship to continue his parasitoids research at Imperial College
(UK).
In 1993 he shifted systems when he became a
post-doc at the NIOO-KNAW, working on laying date in Great Tits.
In 1996 he was appointed as a Senior
Researcher and in 2002 as Head of Department. His main interests are the
interaction between ultimate and proximate aspects of timing, particularly in
the Oak - Winter Moth - Great Tit system, and in the interaction between
individual decision making and population dynamics.
In June 2005 he was appointed as Professor
on Seasonal Timing of Behaviour at Groningen
University.
In December 2006 he obtained a personal VICI
grant from NWO. He is currently subject editor for Global Change Biology.
Selected recent publications:
- Visser M.E., A.J. van
Noordwijk, J. M. Tinbergen & C. M. Lessells 1998. Warmer springs
lead to mis-timed reproduction in Great Tits (Parus major). Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B. 265: 1867-1870.
- Visser
M.E. & L.J.M Holleman 2001. Warmer springs disrupt the synchrony of
Oak and Winter Moth phenology. Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B. 268: 289-294.
- Both
C. & M.E. Visser 2001. Adjustment to climate change is constrained
by arrival date in a long distance migrant bird. Nature 411: 296-298.
- Visser
M.E., Both, C. & M.M. Lambrechts 2004. Global climate change leads
to mistimed avian reproduction. Advances in Ecological Research 35:
89-110.
- Nussey,
D.H., E. Postma, P. Gienapp & M.E. Visser 2005. Selection on
heritable phenotypic plasticity in a wild bird population. Science 310:
304-306.
- Visser,
M.E. & C. Both 2005. Shifts in phenology due to global climate
change: the need for a yardstick. Proc R Soc B 272: 2561 – 2569.
- Visser M.E., L.J.M.
Holleman & P. Gienapp 2006. Shifts in caterpillar biomass phenology
due to climate change and its impact on the breeding biology of an
insectivorous bird. Oecologia 147: 164–172.
- Both, C., S.
Bouwhuis, C.M. Lessells & M.E. Visser 2006. Climate change and
population declines in a long-distance migratory bird. Nature 441: 81-83.
- Gienapp, P., E.
Postma & M.E. Visser 2006 Why breeding time has not yet responded to
selection for earlier breeding in a songbird population. Evolution 60:
2381–2388.
- van
Asch, M., P.H. van Tienderen, L.J.M. Holleman & M.E. Visser 2007.
Predicting adaptation of phenology in response to climate change, an
insect herbivore example. Global Change Biology 13, 1596–1604.
Institution address:
Prof Dr Marcel E. VISSER
Head of Department Animal Population Biology
Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO-KNAW)
P.O. Box 40
6666 ZG Heteren
The Netherlands
Phone: +31-26-4791253
Fax: +31-26-4723227
m.visser@nioo.knaw.nl
Website: www.nioo.knaw.nl
Personal page: www.nioo.knaw.nl/ppages/mvisser
|
