Module Information

Climate change is now recognised as one of the major future challenges to global biodiversity. The module describes various future environmental change factors and how plants, animals and ecosystems will be affected. Students will explore the close relationship between the biophysical, physiological and ecological aspects of the adaptation and acclimation of an organism to its environment and how a changing environment can stress and even exclude organisms from particular locations.

We will discuss the plant community, plant-soil and plant-animal interactions and the role of soil as a habitat but also as a store for carbon and for future climate change mitigation. Plant-animal interactions will be explored by looking at direct (particularly temperature) and indirect effects of climate change factors on animal performance (via changes food palatability and digestibility).

The module benefits from laboratory/glasshouse based training plus a one day field tour drawing on ongoing research in this area.

This module will describe and discuss physiological / ecological research showing evidence of shifts in northern or southern range margins of populations of species from a variety of taxa. We will consider organism physiology in detail and phenological studies that have identified change. Students will explore the close relationship between the biophysical, physiological and ecological aspects of the adaptation and acclimation of an organism to its environment and how a changing environment can stress and even exclude organisms from particular locations. This will involve developing a broad understanding of organism physiology to understanding predicted responses including changes in temperature (gradual increase, extreme events), precipitation (drought or waterlogging), direct effects of elevated CO2 and gaseous pollutants .

We will also present examples of earlier emergence or activity of species and associated ecological studies showing asynchrony of herbivore emergence with host plants or progressive predator asynchrony with their prey populations. More complex impacts on interactions will be considered including the soil-root-plant interface using examples from Long Term Ecosystem Research experiments.

The module provides practical laboratory and a field day with a lecture series that integrates the subject matter in logical order. It spans plant-animal interactions and provides a detailed functional understanding about how plants, animals and communities will respond to a wide range of future climate change factors. This will include understanding of plant ecophysiology and growth, soil systems as sources and sinks of atmospheric carbon. It will also explore interactions with animals focussing primarily on invertebrate herbivores.