Salmon migratory adaptation in the Anthropocene

• Main Author: Pflughoeft, Lauren Tolkemitt
• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: Carleton Digital Commons 2017
• Subjects: evolution; climate change; migration; salmon; Rangifer tarandus
• Online Access: https://digitalcommons.carleton.edu/comps/442

Human-induced changes to the Earth led scientists to declare a new epoch within the Cenozoic era – the Anthropocene (Lewis and Maslin 2015). Climate change, which includes rising temperatures, is a well-documented result of environmental modification by humans and is expected to continue if action is not taken (IPCC 2013). Migratory animals are vulnerable to global enviornmental change by virtue of migratory patterns that span the northern and southern hemispheres (as reviewed in Seebacher and Post 2015). Many migratory species are already impacted by climate change, including salmon (family Salmonidae, genera Oncorhynchus and Salmo, Table 1), multiple bird species (class Aves, Bussiere et al. 2015), various species of aphids (order Hemiptera, Bell et al. 2015), and caribou (Rangifer tarandus groenlandicus, Brotton and Wall 1997). I will use salmon as the model species in this review of evolutionary responses to climate change. Substantial and recent research surrounds the keystone group of species because it is ecologically, economically, and culturally valuable (Schindler et al. 2010). Some salmon populations are in decline (as reviewed by Gende et al. 2002, but see Kovach 2012), which has provided additional motivation to research salmon. In this paper, I report on cases of changing salmon migratory phenology, argue that salmon populations may be evolving in response to climate change, explore different hypotheses for the observed shifts in migratory events, and propose that community level phenological change may follow salmon migratory change.