Mechanisms Linking Early-Life Stress and Resilience to Climate Change in Amphibians

Climate change imposes a myriad of environmental stressors to wildlife that are particularly challenging to early life-stages in animals with complex life histories such as amphibians. Poor developmental conditions have been shown to impact survival later in life.

As amphibians are the most threatened vertebrate class, identifying mechanisms that shape their capacity to cope with environmental stress is vital for predicting population responses.

In AMPHISTRESS, I aim to investigate how early-life stress can affect resilience to climate change in amphibians by exploring the underlying neuroendocrine and physiological mechanisms mediating the interplay between environmental change, behaviour, and stress physiology.

Hereto, I will employ an interdisciplinary approach exposing amphibian larvae to sub-optimal developmental conditions (elevated temperature, pond drying, hypoxia) and first assess the resulting impact on glucocorticoid “stress” hormone levels, oxidative stress, animal personality/coping style, growth, and short-term stress responsiveness before and after metamorphosis.

Then, I will assess the movement behaviour of juveniles toads under semi-natural conditions to understand if early-life stress-induced altered growth trajectories interact with dispersal capacity.

Lastly, I will build heuristic models to identify how individual stress-responses to climate change can scale up to affect population dynamics.

AMPHISTRESS will provide novel information on the effects of climate change-induced habitat alterations on amphibians, and the importance of habitat connectivity for amphibian dispersal, survival, and population persistence thereby generating knowledge with direct conservation value.

Finally, this project will be the cornerstone of my long-term research goals to link developmental conditions and life-history trajectories in an eco-evolutionary framework and would provide me with a unique opportunity to strengthen my scientific profile to advance my career.