RAMDAM

Does an episodic climate change necessarily generate a perennial adaptive response (morphological and/or behavioural), or does behavioural plasticity absorb the main effects?

We propose to test it on the ecosystem of the lower Omo valley (Ethiopia) during the globally cold episode of the MIS M2 (3.312 Ma - 3.264 Ma) which is interspersed within a period of >2 million years of globally warm, stable, and high CO2 concentration. This project between geoscientists (INSU) and biological evolution specialists (INEE) aims to quantify, for the first time, the effect of the M2 glaciation on landscapes and vegetation, and the nature and magnitude of adaptive responses of tropical faunas to a short, abrupt, global climatic event during the Pliocene.

The objectives are to better constrain the mechanisms behind important adaptive changes in faunas at the individual, specific and community scales.