About the project
Predicting how fishes will respond to climate change depends on a clear understanding of the mechanisms that link performance in the wild to temperature. This project uses novel metabolic proxy tools to unravel the energetic cost of living across global latitudinal and climate gradients.
Bioenergetic theory predicts that animals living in environments with narrow seasonal temperature ranges will be more sensitive to warming (or cooling) than those from more variable temperate environments. Cold-adapted populations may also express higher metabolic rates than warm-adapted populations when exposed to a common temperature. Combined, these hypotheses predict that the thermal sensitivity of field metabolic rate will be maximized in polar and tropical regions, and that temperature-corrected metablic rates may increase from tropical to polar regions. However, to date no direct tests of the effect of temperature on field metabolism of wild fish populations across climatic zones has been conducted.
This project uses a stable-isotope based chemical proxy for field metabolism developed in Southampton. Using this proxy you will initially run laboratory experiments to calibrate the proxy against traditional respirometry methods, then determine and compare the thermal sensitivity of field metabolic rate in fishes from polar (Arctic and Antarctic), temperate (European shelf) and tropical (Caribbean, Eastern Pacific and Indian Ocean) settings. You will test hypotheses predicting relationships between FMR and environmental temperature, and explore whether the thermal sensitivity of FMR varies with environmental seasonality.
Ultimately your insights will help to develop our understanding of the relationships between environmental temperature and energy budgets. Your results will have immediate relevance for predicting species performance, persistence and geographic redistribution in the face of ongoing climate change. Tropical and temperate fishes in particular support major commercial and artisanal fisheries and your model species will include taxa underpinning regionally significant fisheries.
Supervisors
As well as supervisors based at the University of Southampton, you will also receive supervision from individuals at the British Antarctic Survey (BAS):
