HeatWave : An ecosystem-wide genomics approach to study past and future changes in biodiversity in warming seas

Project description

Project period: 2026-2029

Participating Departments from the museum: Department of Nature and Environment Monitoring (NA)

Marine ecosystems will be profoundly reshaped by climate change. Understanding the impacts of sea warming is thus crucial for marine conservation. This requires a powerful approach that would allow to examine both past and future impacts of climate fluctuations on species. Genomic tools can be used to track past demographic and adaptive responses of species to changing environments, while habitat modelling and simulations can predict their future responses to climate change.

However, to date, the few studies that have used these methods have only focused on single-species analyses, limiting our understanding of the ecosystem-wide effects of climate change. To fill this gap, we will develop a temporal multi-species approach to investigate the impacts of sea warming on the North Atlantic ecosystem.

Using published and new genome data for invertebrate, fish, bird and mammalian species we will examine their demographic responses to climate fluctuations of the Pleistocene. We will then track temporal changes in detrimental and adaptive genomic variation over the past few centuries, a period characterised by rapid sea warming and intense human pressure. Finally, based on these results we will model the future distribution and genomic response of marine species under various sea warming scenarios.

This project will build a solid methodology to study how sea warming can alter marine ecosystems and will generate fundamental insights into the resilience of marine ecosystems to sea warming.

Research goals

Climate change is having profound effects on the marine environment. Understanding the response of marine species to these effects is thus essential to develop effective conservation measures for marine ecosystems. By leveraging modern and historical genomes and using species distribution modelling and simulations for several North East Atlantic invertebrate, fish, bird and mammalian species, we will develop a multi-species approach to investigate the effects of climate change on marine ecosystems from the deep-past to centuries to come. We propose three objectives:

1. Study the deep-time demography of marine species from the Pleistocene to Holocene
2. Examine the recent changes in genome-wide diversity of marine species over the past ~300 years
3. Predict the future impacts of sea warming on ecosystem structure and genomic variation of marine species

Societal relevance

By combining multiple organisms (i.e., invertebrates, fish, birds, mammals) and trophic levels (i.e. prey, meso-predator, predator), the project will provide extensive insights into the effects of warming sea temperature on the North Atlantic ecosystem. This knowledge is essential to identify species and populations that are more vulnerable to the ecological and physiological stresses associated with sea warming. These results will also be highly relevant for setting management strategies of fishing stocks as well as informing the establishment and management of marine reserves. Finally, this project will also greatly contribute to developing genomics as a monitoring tool for marine species and ecosystems.

The project will contribute to the fulfilment of two of the sustainable development goals (SDG) identified by the United Nations: Life below water (Goal 14) and Ensure sustainable production and consumption (Goal 12).

Relevant networks

• Naturvårdsverket: https://www.naturvardsverket.se
• Hav: https://www.havochvatten.se Länk till annan webbplats.
• ICES: https://www.ices.dk/ Länk till annan webbplats.

Financial support

Vetenskapsrådet (grant number 2025-03922)

Team

Prof. Kerstin Johanneson (Tjärnö marina laboratorium, Gothenburg University)

Prof. Leif Andersson (Uppsala University)

Assoc. Prof. Ulf Bergström (Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala)

Dr. Hernán Morales (University of Copenhagen)

Principal Investigator (NRM, PAN)