Assessing the ongoing and future adaptive capacities of populations to cope with global changes challenge our best ecological monitoring tools, even more so for remote ecosystems like Polar Regions. Polar Life Observatories aim to fill such a gap by setting long-term electronic and telemetric monitoring of key polar seabirds together with systematic sampling of biological material during tagging. Doing so, we could unravel the ecological and evolutionary processes shaping populations and quantify the trend and health of their ecosystems. Our multidisciplinary and integrative collaborative network aims to measure the individual and population responses to environmental constraints by examining the complex selective forces at play both at sea and on land. To delineate their adaptive potential, we deploy state-of-the-art methods to quantify genetic and gene expression diversity together with epigenetic processes. By integrating these mechanisms at all levels of diversity, we develop predictive models for the evolutionary responses of populations to environmental changes. Altogether our near real-time marine ecosystem remote sensing could be expanded to a circumAntarctic smart Life Observatories network enabling for the first time population conservation and ecosystem management action plans with detail and current data in situ.

Primary Presenter: Céline Le Bohec, Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) (celine.le-bohec@cnrs.fr)

Authors:

Céline Le Bohec, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS-France) & Centre Scientifique de Monaco (CSM)  (celine.le-bohec@cnrs.fr)

Gaël Bardon, Centre Scientifique de Monaco (CSM) & Université de Strasbourg (UNISTRA-France)  (gael.bardon@iphc.cnrs.fr)

Téo Barracho, Université de Strasbourg (UNISTRA-France) & Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS-France)  (teo.barracho@iphc.cnrs.fr)

Francesco Bonadonna, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS-France)  (francesco.bonadonna@cefe.cnrs.fr)

Robin Cristofari, University of Turku (UTU-Finland)  (robin.cristofari@utu.fi)

Flávia Fernandes, Università Politecnica Delle Marche (UNIVPM-Italy) & Université de Strasbourg (UNISTRA-France)  (f.fernandes@pm.univpm.it)

Aymeric Houstin, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI-USA)  (aymeric.houstin@whoi.edu)

Nicolas Lecomte, Université de Moncton (Canada)  (nicolas.lecomte@umoncton.ca)

Lana Lenourry, École Normale Supérieure Paris-Saclay (ENS-France)  (lana.lenourry@ens-paris-saclay.fr)

Sebastian Richter, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU-Germany)  (sebastian.sr.richter@fau.de)

Emiliano Trucchi, Università Politecnica Delle Marche (UNIVPM-Italy)  (e.trucchi@staff.univpm.it)

Alexander Winterl, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU-Germany)  (alexander.winterl@fau.de)

Daniel Zitterbart, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI-USA)  (dpz@whoi.edu)