Understanding How Species Should Move Under Climate Change and Human Disturbance

The Zhang lab focuses on understanding and predicting the optimal movement strategy under different scenarios of climate changes and anthropogenic disturbances. We aim to predict the ecological and evolutionary consequences of different movement strategies in changing environments. For instance, we are interested in identifying the optimal movement strategy under habitat fragmentation or in environments with toxicants.

 

We've created a powerful laboratory experimental system using C. elegans strains with different movement strategies, e.g., one strain moves faster than another. We've manipulated different conditions of changing climate, such as we created different intensities of fragmentation via changing the distribution patterns of resources for  C. elegans. We've run competition experiments of strains with different movement strategies to determine which movement strategy has the maximum benefit under certain changing environments. The following research questions (amongst others) can be explored:

 

• Is it better to move to areas with fewer resources but less toxicant or the other way around?
• Will the addition of more resources in a stressful location compensate/decrease the impact of the stressor?
• Is it better to move slower or faster when fragmentation (habitat loss) occurs?

The mentee will work to prepare chemical solutions to culture both C elegans strains and E coli, use a 3D printer to design different fragmentation patterns on petri dishes, perform experiments to quantify the change in C. elegans population abundance in each fragmentation environment, and learn to use both the stereo microscope and the fluorescent stereo microscope to collect images.

 

Network Mentor: Dr. Bo Zhang