Eco-evolutionary consequences of food regimes

Copepods are an essential link in marine foodchains and the global carbon cycle. Climate change will dramatically reshape food availability for copepods, but we still have no idea how they will evolve to cope with this change. I explored the short-term plastic responses and long-term evolutionary responses to food levels in a marine copepod using laboratory experiments and integral projection models. I report copepods responses to food that were unanticipated by previous research, and how change-induced impacts on phytoplankton could alter copepod life histories in ways that may have unforeseen knock-on effects for marine foodwebs and the global carbon pump.