HOW DO SEASONAL CYCLES SHAPE LIFE CYCLES? A UNIFYING FRAMEWORK TO UNDERSTAND VARIATIONS ACROSS THE GLOBE AND PREDICT SHIFTS IN A CHANGING WORLD

Seasonal fluctuations occur throughout the planet.

Ecosystems and humans alike exhibit and depend crucially on species' phenology, the timing of seasonal biological activity. Climate change has been distorting the length of the warm ‘growing’ season (i.e. summer) around the world. The resulting 'phenological shifts' comprise the most dramatic and well-documented symptom of climate change.

However, phenological research has focused on idiosyncratic case studies of shifts with proximate explanations.

A unifying framework that ties together the disparate body of evidence with ecological and evolutionary principles has been lacking, making it difficult to understand the source of variations and forecast continued phenological shifts.

CyclesOfLife will establish such a framework and make timely use of big data to test the framework at an ambitious, global scale.

I will build the theoretical backbone based on a novel approach I developed recently, which leverages quantitative tools from life-history theory and evolutionary demography to calculate natural selection dynamics of phenological traits in cyclically fluctuating environments.

Armed with the theoretical framework, I will utilize the gradient of growing season lengths that exists across the planet's latitudes as a 'natural experiment' to test the relationship between season length and phenology.

I will analyze demographic and phenological big data now available openly online to inform, test, and refine this theoretical relationship.

Lastly, with deepened understanding of how growing season length around the world shapes phenology, I will make predictions of how phenology might continue to change in the future under different climate change scenarios.

Beyond meeting the research objectives, the fellowship will enable my training in eco-evolutionary theory and big data science at Oxford, both powerful and timely skills needed for my career development as a leading researcher in phenology and evolutionary demography.