Team

Global warming is happening most rapidly in the Arctic, with the Svalbard archipelago (Norway) facing the greatest increases in ambient temperature. This, and the simplicity of its terrestrial ecosystem, make Svalbard an ideal system to study ecosystem resilience. My thesis is part of the Svalbard Reindeer Project, a project that aims to understand the impacts of global warming through the Svalbard reindeer (Rangifer tarandus platyrhynchus), a keystone species of the ecosystem of Svalbard. Because new findings show two distinct phenotypes of thermoregulation physiology within Svalbard reindeer populations, that also differ in other traits, including reproductive success, diets and guts microbiomes, I will investigate how reindeer life-history tactics cluster individuals across a range of phenotypic traits. Then, considering these results, I will determine how climate change will influence reindeer population dynamics, including feedbacks to other trophic levels. This project will thereby help predict the response of reindeer populations to rapid climate warming and provide new insight on the possible consequences on their ecosystems. The objectives of this research are threefold. First, I aim to determine whether different life-history tactics exist within the population using a joint mixture model. Second, I will document how the proportions of the two phenotypes of thermoregulation change with environmental conditions fluctuation and whether one of the phenotypes could be better adapted to cope with climate change. Third, a joint state-space capture-mark-recapture model will be built and used to assess the influence of future climate change scenarios on the multi-way trophic interactions (plants-phenotypes-parasites) of the system to predict future reindeer population dynamics.