Grant: Discovery Launch Supplement

Humans, as major drivers of ecological change, notably from resource exploitation and climate change, are responsible for over half of wild population declines. The rising temperatures have already reshaped, elevated fire frequencies, reduced snow cover, heightened primary productivity, and shortened winters. Intensive forest exploitation further transforms the boreal landscape. These changes alter selection pressures on wildlife, impacting phenological, behavioural, physiological, and morphological traits. Despite its significance, little is known about the combined effects of climate change and forestry on wildlife traits and eco-evolutionary dynamics. In environments characterized by spatial and temporal heterogeneity, organisms encounter diverse conditions, promoting phenotypic plasticity. However, if disturbances push the environment far from the species' optimum, directional selection will favour traits aiding dispersal and colonization. Recent advances in individual-based modelling have shed light on this interplay between plasticity and evolution. Nevertheless, empirical studies exploring the links between spatiotemporal variance, autocorrelation, and plasticity and evolution in nature remain limited. Forestry and climate change are expected to have very different effects. While forestry causes abrupt, spatially heterogeneous, recurring changes in the environment while global warming causes a more gradual, spatially homogeneous change in the climate and its variability. My research will address three themes: A) the spatiotemporal changes in the adaptive landscape of wildlife caused by forest exploitation, climate change and their synergetic effects, B) the plastic and evolutionary responses of wildlife to these change in selective pressures, and C) the role of dispersal in the eco-evolutionary dynamics of wild species. To achieve these goals, a comprehensive monitoring program for micro-mammals in collaboration with Aiguebelle provincial park will be initiated. This program will use spatially explicit monitoring of marked animals in mature forest, windthrow and anthropized sites (logging and plantations) and investigate how various traits (mass, size, colour, dentition, personality) change in response to the environment changes to estimate fitness, environment and year specific selection gradient. All these parameters will be estimated using Bayesian hidden Markov spatially explicit capture recapture models with a latent joint phenotype component. Using genomic based relatedness matrix, we will also estimate the genetic basis of those individual differences. By using multisession approach to our spatial monitoring, we will also be able to estimate habitat and trait-specific movement patterns, exploring the changing role of dispersal in eco-evolutionary dynamics. My innovative research is instrumental in predicting how wildlife will respond to ongoing human-driven environmental changes.