High fitness costs of climate change‐induced camouflage mismatch

Anthropogenic climate change has created myriad stressors that threaten to cause local extinctions if wild populations fail to adapt to novel conditions. We studied individual and population‐level fitness costs of a climate change‐induced stressor: camouflage mismatch in seasonally colour molting species confronting decreasing snow cover duration. Based on field measurements of radiocollared snowshoe hares, we found strong selection on coat colour molt phenology, such that animals mismatched with the colour of their background experienced weekly survival decreases up to 7%. In the absence of adaptive response, we show that these mortality costs would result in strong population‐level declines by the end of the century. However, natural selection acting on wide individual variation in molt phenology might enable evolutionary adaptation to camouflage mismatch. We conclude that evolutionary rescue will be critical for hares and other colour molting species to keep up with climate change.     

气候波动和土地覆盖变化对广东省植被净初级生产力的相对影响

为深入理解人类活动对陆地生态系统的影响,采用CASA(Carnegie-Ames-Stanford Approach)模型估算广东省2000、2005和2010年实际植被净初级生产力(Net primary productivity,NPP),并基于情景模拟法估算气候和土地覆盖类型稳定条件下的植被NPP,对气候波动和土地覆盖变化在植被NPP变化中的相对贡献进行了研究。结果表明:太阳辐射对植被NPP具有显著的正向控制作用,气温与植被NPP表现为显著负相关,降水不是该区域植被生长的限制性因子;各气候因子与植被NPP的相关性具有季节和区域差异性。在气候不变条件下,土地覆盖变化整体上增加了NPP,对NPP变化的相对贡献与城市扩张格局相类似,不同生态区存在差异性,以珠三角区的贡献最大。总之,气候波动对NPP变化的相对贡献较为复杂,取决于气候因子的波动特征以及与NPP的相关性;其它因子(城市热岛、农耕活动和园林管理等)对NPP变化的相对贡献存在很多不确定性,整体上增加了NPP。     

内蒙古土地利用变化对生态系统防风固沙功能的影响

土壤风蚀是内蒙古的严重环境问题之一。在对内蒙古2000年到2010年的土地利用变化特征进行分析的基础上,分析了内蒙古土地利用变化的主要特征,以RWEQ模型估算了内蒙古2000年和2010年的固沙物质量,采用空间统计分析评估了固沙功能对土地利用变化的响应,结果表明:(1)2000—2010年土地利用变化以城镇高速发展、草地和湿地面积锐减、林地灌丛有所恢复以及荒漠环境改善为主要特征。(2)2000—2010的十年间内蒙古固沙物质总量增长了17.75%,草地总面积虽有所降低,但是部分区域草地覆盖度的上升增强了草地固沙能力,而林地的固沙物质量则由于农田、草地改为林地的短期内地表保护力的下降而有所降低。(3)十年间农田退耕还草、荒漠环境的改善、草地质量提高等土地利用变化方式有益于生态环境质量的提高,使生态防风固沙功能得以增强,造成固沙物质量提高了约0.25亿t。(4)农田开垦、城镇发展、荒漠化发展、湿地萎缩以及草地的退化等土地利用变化会使生态环境质量降低,生态系统防风固沙功能下降,累计造成的固沙物质量的减少总量约为0.19亿t。从十年间综合来看,内蒙古的土地利用变化对区域固沙功能有一定的增强作用,但是尚存在城镇发展过快、草地湿地转化压力过大、草地退化、荒漠化对固沙功能的弱化问题,需要在今后的土地利用规划和管理工作中予以改进以进一步增强区域固沙功能,构建北方地区生态安全屏障。     

Seventy-year chronology of Salinas in southern France: Coastal surfaces managed for salt production and conservation issues for abandoned sites

After World War II, twenty-nine coastal Salinas (122 km²), located in the vicinity of coastal lagoons and in deltas, were exploited along the Mediterranean coastlines in South France. Today, only five of these are still actively producing salt, currently representing 175 km². Concomitant with the abandonment of many of the smaller Salinas, the larger Salinas in the Rhône delta (Camargue) strongly increased their surfaces at the expense of natural ecosystems, of which a part has also been abandoned after 2009. This paper documents these changes in landscape use by chronological GIS mapping and describes the fate of the 91 km² of abandoned Salina surfaces. The majority of this area (88 km²) is included in the Natura 2000 network, among which most (74 km²) has been acquired by the French coastal protection agency (Conservatoire du Littoral) to be designated as Protected Areas. Only a very minor part (<1%) has been lost for industry and harbour development. Managing abandoned Salinas as Protected Areas is a challenge, because of the different landscape, biodiversity conservation, natural and cultural heritages issues at stake. In two cases, abandoned Salinas have been brought back again into exploitation by private initiative thus allowing for the protection of original hypersaline biodiversity. In other cases, the shaping of the landscape by natural processes has been privileged. This has facilitated the spontaneous recreation of temporal Mediterranean wetlands with unique aquatic vegetation, and offered opportunities for managed coastal re-alignment and the restoration of hydrobiological exchanges between land and sea. In other areas, former salt ponds continue to be filled artificially by pumping favouring opportunities for waterfowl. This has often been combined with the creation of artificial islets to provide nesting ground for bird colonies protected from terrestrial predators.     

Finding Nemo’s Genes: A chromosome‐scale reference assembly of the genome of the orange clownfish Amphiprion percula

The iconic orange clownfish, Amphiprion percula, is a model organism for studying the ecology and evolution of reef fishes, including patterns of population connectivity, sex change, social organization, habitat selection and adaptation to climate change. Notably, the orange clownfish is the only reef fish for which a complete larval dispersal kernel has been established and was the first fish species for which it was demonstrated that antipredator responses of reef fishes could be impaired by ocean acidification. Despite its importance, molecular resources for this species remain scarce and until now it lacked a reference genome assembly. Here, we present a de novo chromosome‐scale assembly of the genome of the orange clownfish Amphiprion percula. We utilized single‐molecule real‐time sequencing technology from Pacific Biosciences to produce an initial polished assembly comprised of 1,414 contigs, with a contig N50 length of 1.86 Mb. Using Hi‐C‐based chromatin contact maps, 98% of the genome assembly were placed into 24 chromosomes, resulting in a final assembly of 908.8 Mb in length with contig and scaffold N50s of 3.12 and 38.4 Mb, respectively. This makes it one of the most contiguous and complete fish genome assemblies currently available. The genome was annotated with 26,597 protein‐coding genes and contains 96% of the core set of conserved actinopterygian orthologs. The availability of this reference genome assembly as a community resource will further strengthen the role of the orange clownfish as a model species for research on the ecology and evolution of reef fishes.     

Environmental and physiochemical controls on coral calcification along a latitudinal temperature gradient in Western Australia

The processes that occur at the micro‐scale site of calcification are fundamental to understanding the response of coral growth in a changing world. However, our mechanistic understanding of chemical processes driving calcification is still evolving. Here, we report the results of a long‐term in situ study of coral calcification rates, photo‐physiology, and calcifying fluid (cf) carbonate chemistry (using boron isotopes, elemental systematics, and Raman spectroscopy) for seven species (four genera) of symbiotic corals growing in their natural environments at tropical, subtropical, and temperate locations in Western Australia (latitudinal range of ~11°). We find that changes in net coral calcification rates are primarily driven by pH_cf and carbonate ion concentration []_cf in conjunction with temperature and DIC_cf. Coral pH_cf varies with latitudinal and seasonal changes in temperature and works together with the seasonally varying DIC_cf to optimize []_cf at species‐dependent levels. Our results indicate that corals shift their pH_cf to adapt and/or acclimatize to their localized thermal regimes. This biological response is likely to have critical implications for predicting the future of coral reefs under CO₂‐driven warming and acidification.     

Multiple stressor effects on coral reef ecosystems

Global climate change has profound implications on species distributions and ecosystem functioning. In the coastal zone, ecological responses may be driven by various biogeochemical and physical environmental factors. Synergistic interactions can occur when the combined effects of stressors exceed their individual effects. The Red Sea, characterized by strong gradients in temperature, salinity, and nutrients along the latitudinal axis provides a unique opportunity to study ecological responses over a range of these environmental variables. Using multiple linear regression models integrating in situ, satellite and oceanographic data, we investigated the response of coral reef taxa to local stressors and recent climate variability. Taxa and functional groups responded to a combination of climate (temperature, salinity, air‐sea heat fluxes, irradiance, wind speed), fishing pressure and biogeochemical (chlorophyll a and nutrients ‐ phosphate, nitrate, nitrite) factors. The regression model for each species showed interactive effects of climate, fishing pressure and nutrient variables. The nature of the effects (antagonistic or synergistic) was dependent on the species and stressor pair. Variables consistently associated with the highest number of synergistic interactions included heat flux terms, temperature, and wind speed followed by fishing pressure. Hard corals and coralline algae abundance were sensitive to changing environmental conditions where synergistic interactions decreased their percentage cover. These synergistic interactions suggest that the negative effects of fishing pressure and eutrophication may exacerbate the impact of climate change on corals. A high number of interactions were also recorded for algae, however for this group, synergistic interactions increased algal abundance. This study is unique in applying regression analysis to multiple environmental variables simultaneously to understand stressor interactions in the field. The observed responses have important implications for understanding climate change impacts on marine ecosystems and whether managing local stressors, such as nutrient enrichment and fishing activities, may help mitigate global drivers of change.