A Marine Evolutionary Time Machine

This lecture introduces the Baltic Sea, one of the largest brackish water bodies on Earth, as a time machine to preview the evolutionary and ecological consequences of major environmental perturbations on marine life. Already today, many anthropogenic pressures in the Baltic have reached unprecedented levels, predicted for other ocean areas only for the distant future, including ocean acidification, warming, deoxygenation, desalination and overfishing. These pressures not only elicit physiological stress and community change but also constitute strong selection pressures. In a few cases, the peculiar conditions in the Baltic have resulted in rapid incipient speciation of Baltic ecotypes of algae or fish compared to the North Atlantic ancestors. This lecture will highlight a number of recent studies that have demonstrated rapid evolutionary change, either by comparing geographically distant populations in space-for-time designs, or by following time series data directly. Small effective population sizes, a blocked escape route to the North and increasingly adverse conditions for cold-temperate species make the Baltic a natural laboratory for the observation of eco-evolutionary change in real time. The Distinguished Lectures in Life Science Series Presents: Dr. Thorsten Reusch, Professor of Marine Ecology, GEOMAR Join from PC, Mac, Linux, iOS or Android: https://psu.zoom.us/j/95374948974?pwd=VDRUMFJIak9oL1FCMHlJeXFlcFBtQT09 Password: Huck This presentation will be recorded.