Extreme climatic events in relation to global change and their impact on life histories

Extreme weather conditions occur at an increasing rate as evidenced by higher frequency of hurricanes and more ex- treme precipitation and temperature anomalies. Such extreme environmental conditions will have important implications for all living organisms through greater frequency of reproductive failure and reduced adult survival. We review examples of reproduc- tive failure and reduced survival related to extreme weather conditions. Phenotypic plasticity may not be sufficient to allow adap- tation to extreme weather for many animals. Theory predicts reduced reproductive effort as a response to increased stochasticity. We predict that patterns of natural selection will change towards truncation selection as environmental conditions become more extreme. Such changes in patterns of selection may facilitate adaptation to extreme events. However, effects of selection on re- productive effort are difficult to detect. We present a number of predictions for the effects of extreme weather conditions in need of empirical tests. Finally, we suggest a number of empirical reviews that could improve our ability to judge the effects of extreme environmental conditions on life history (Current Zoology 57 (3): 375-389, 2011).

• Publication year

  2011

• Venue

  Current Zoology

• Publication date

  2011-06-01

• Fields of study

  Biology, Environmental Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1093/CZOOLO/57.3.375
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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