Math Biology Seminar: Ophélie Ronce

As climate warms, different phenotypes, such as different flowering time in plants or breeding date in birds, are favored by natural selection. To persist, species must therefore change their geographical distribution to track the climate to which they were adapted to, and/or their phenotypic distribution to adapt to new climates. Quantitative genetics models describing joint changes in phenotypic and geographical distributions have been developed in the nineties to better understand the challenges faced by species under climate change. We have built on this work by examining how the life cycle of species affects and jointly evolves with these dynamics: I will present a few examples of work in progress where collaboration between mathematicians and evolutionary biologists have led to new insights on how age-structure, mode of reproduction, mutation and dispersal affect the response of species to climate change.