Projects

Using ecophysiologically-based mechanistic modelling, we will be able to better understand how ectotherms are adapted to extremely dry environments and how they will cope with climate change in the future.

Funding bodies: Republic of Slovenia, Ministry of Higher Education, Science and Innovation and European Union – NextGenerationEU

Global climate change and biodiversity loss are pressing issues of our time. The European Union is directly addressing these issues through its Green Deal and Mission Climate programmes. Global environmental challenges such as increased temperatures and increasingly severe and prolonged droughts will affect all living organisms, triggering mechanisms of adaptation that are poorly understood but essential for understanding the natural processes that can help us preserve biodiversity for the future.

Current climate models predict drastic changes in the water cycle worldwide in the future, which will be particularly challenging for terrestrial habitats that will become drier with increasing frequency and duration of droughts. The EctoAdapToArid project focuses on research of the impacts of drought-related climate change on terrestrial ectotherms and their ability to cope with it at the physiological level. The regulation of water balance in terrestrial ectotherms is complex. It involves the modulation of various physiological, behavioural and hormonal mechanisms, while water balance is influenced by water exchange within the organism and between the organism and the environment. Drought threatens the water balance of terrestrial ectotherms by increasing evaporation rates, decreasing water or food availability and/or increasing energy expenditure due to altered behaviour (e.g. searching for water or food, hiding from the sun).

Ectotherms must maintain a favourable water balance in a changing environment. In our study, we are investigating how beetles, lizards and arachnids are adapted to water loss under different environmental conditions, and how they metabolize water. Using a specific experimental design, we will try to determine whether they have the ability to respond physiologically within or between generations to different environmental conditions. How organisms will cope with drought is a fundamental question, not only as a topic of broad interest in evolutionary biology, but also to help predict the consequences of climate change. Indeed, knowledge of their physiology will then inform mechanistic ecological models that allow us to predict population responses to changing environmental conditions.

Answers to these challenges will help to unravel sustainable pathways for biodiversity conservation under the impacts of climate change at different scales, from local, regional, European to global. 

Total financial value of the project: 178,320€ (NOO: 178,320€).

Links

• Project web page
• The Recovery and Resilience Plan
• evropskasredstva.si portal