Global change impacts wildlife by influencing behaviour and demography, ultimately leading to change in abundance and distribution. Phenotypic plasticity is key for understanding how wildlife will respond to environmental modification. The EUROENET project will promote data sharing and international collaboration at the scale of the European continent on an emblematic pan-European large herbivore, the roe deer (Capreolus capreolus), in order to better understand how species may adapt to a rapidly changing environment. The central objective is to facilitate the identification of principal drivers of phenotypic plasticity in terms of behavioural and demographic traits, so as to evaluate how future global change will impact their behaviour, performance and spatial distribution. For this, there is a clear need for wide ranging comparative analyses at the continental scale. This will be achieved through promotion of the EURODEER initiative (www.eurodeer.org) which was launched in 2010 to facilitate collaborative work using a shared data base of individual-level behavioural data and other life history information, involving 29 research groups in 14 European countries. The EUROENET project will i/ extend the data base with a variety of additional animal-based data and biophysical information through remote sensing, and ii/ develop collaboration through comparative analyses of these data by financing meetings, workshops and exchanges. Large scale studies and networks can provide significant breakthroughs in evolutionary ecology and are powerful tools for predicting the response of species to future scenarios of environmental change, but surprisingly few examples of this exist in animal ecology. The roe deer is the most common large herbivore in Europe, occupying a wide range of habitats and showing marked ecological and behavioural plasticity. This ecological engineer influences plant dynamics and community structure, nutrient cycles, biodiversity, disease prevalence and distribution. In addition, it has considerable socio-economic impact through hunting, collisions, plant damage and as a reservoir for pathogens. Global change will likely increase human-wildlife interactions and conflicts in the near future. Understanding how roe deer may adapt to environmental modification will help to predict how global change will modify its distribution and impact, promoting better management of the species and associated conflicts. The EUROENET funding proposal will promote collaboration among a multi-disciplinary group of researchers on the drivers of behavioural and demographic variability across environmental gradients. The proposal will be coordinated by Mark Hewison (WP0), in close interaction with a multi-national steering committee, and consists of two main work packages. WP1 will develop the data base and facilitate its exploitation through developing its structure and functionality, providing support and training for users and updating the data base documentation and web site. The second work package (WP2) will stimulate scientific collaboration by building multi-partner projects during annual meetings, thematic virtual workshops and short-term visits between countries. We will initially prioritize analysis of how environmental gradients drive variation in movement behaviour, natal dispersal and mating tactics. For the medium term, we will set up thematic working groups to explore environmental drivers of variation in key demographic parameters, the genetic basis of phenotypic variation, the influence of roe deer movements on tick abundance and pathogens, and the influence of the recent return of large predators and of inter-specific interactions on roe deer life history tactics. EUROENET will promote the role of French scientists within this network and lead to the construction of an ambitious proposal to a European agency in the near future.

While the analysis of biodiversity has become a major topic of ecology and evolution, the diversity observed in life history trait trajectories at the individual level remains poorly understood. DivInT aims at filling this knowledge gap by (1) integrating existing data on individual trajectories of life history traits in contrasted populations of vertebrates, (2) performing standardized analyses of these trajectories within and among populations both within and across traits, (3) measuring the diversity of observed individual trajectories of phenotypic traits and fitness components, (4) identifying factors that shape the diversity of individual trajectories and quantifying their impact on population growth rate, and (5) quantifying the relative contribution of chance, constraint, and adaptation in shaping individual trajectories within and across populations. DivInT will thus provide new insight on how individual heterogeneity shapes population dynamics and life history evolution.

The responses of animal populations to global change are mediated by proximate behavioral processes that determine the energy budget and, ultimately, the demographic performance of individuals. Animal movement is currently considered as a key behavior for understanding, and so predicting, the responses of animals (such as shifts in spatial distribution) to global change. The plasticity of movement behavior within and among individuals is hence critical to the potential for both adaptive and non-adaptive responses of animal populations to environmental variability and change. Mov-It aims to be among the first empirical based studies to evaluate, at both intra- and inter-specific levels, how individual behavioral heterogeneity impacts movement energetics, habitat selection, and demographic responses to global change. We will (1) quantify intra- and inter-specific variability in movement patterns and activity rhythms and, from this, infer energetic budgets of locomotion in relation to major drivers of global change (temperature, seasonality, landscape modification, human activities) (2) use these new insights to identify population responses to environmental drivers while accounting for individual variability, (3) parametrise spatially explicit demographic models to forecast how population dynamics and distribution should respond to environmental changes and human disturbance, accounting for individual heterogeneity, landscape constraints, and species-specific traits. To reach these goals, we will combine long term monitoring programs on spatial behavior and demography, new empirical data from cutting-edge biologgers, and demographic modeling to generate spatially-explicit demographic models for forecasting population- and species-specific responses to global change. We will focus on large wild herbivores, considered as ecosystem engineers with marked impacts on their habitat, as a highly relevant model group to link fine-scale processes of movement with broad-scale demographic rates and patterns of distribution. We will exploit 6 unique long term monitoring studies (>20 years) of marked individuals (>1000 individuals marked with GPS so far) of 4 species (roe deer, red deer, chamois, mouflon) with contrasting behavior and life histories. We will generate a massive amount of additional, very high resolution, data from GPS monitoring combined with biologgers (200 year-individuals over the 6 sites) to infer ranging behaviors and energetic expenditure. This new generation of biologgers can record tri-axial accelerometry up to 40 times per second, but also geomagnetism, temperature, light, and pressure. They will allow us to obtain completely new insights into animal body micro-movements and behaviors (i.e. proxies of energetic expenditure that previously could only be measured in the laboratory), but also into the local environment experienced by the animal itself in a natural setting. Through 5 linked work packages, we will explore how key dimensions of the landscape which were hitherto beyond the reach of ecological studies (thermal- and energetic-landscapes, WPs 1 & 2), shape movement behavior, time budgets, and energy balance in large herbivores. Next, we will focus on consistent inter-individual variability in movement and activity in relation to habitat heterogeneity, infrastructures (WP3), and human recreational activities (WP4). From there, we will link individual variability in movement and energetic balance to demographic performance by parameterising Integral Population Models (WP5). Mov-It will thereby provide new insights on the sensitivity of population dynamics and spatial distribution of large wild herbivores to forecast global change (both climatic and human-driven) derived from behavioral processes studied at the individual level in species with contrasting life histories, and clearly founded in the principles of evolutionary ecology.

In the current Anthropocene era, humans are having an increasingly marked impact on wildlife populations and ecosystems. This “super-predator” now exerts the most influential selective force shaping the evolution of the behaviour of wild animals. While we are witnessing the return of large carnivores in many European countries, human activities undoubtedly alter the interactions between these predators and their prey, questioning the role that carnivores play in shaping ecosystem functioning in human-dominated landscapes. In this context, the AnthropoFEAR project will evaluate how the predation context (large carnivores, hunting, both) influences the behavioural tactics of roe deer (a common prey for both lynx and wolf, and an intensely hunted herbivore). The project will employ both observational (based on GPS and behavioural monitoring in several roe deer populations of Europe) and experimental approaches. We will first compare anti-predator tactics (in terms of habitat selection, vigilance levels and escape decisions) of roe deer in response to risk in contrasted predation contexts. We will then quantify their cascading effects on the understorey vegetation in a highly controlled ecosystem, in which we will experimentally modify the landscape of fear perceived by animals. Because individuals do not respond in the same way to a given predation risk, we will also assess the degree of inter-individual variability of these anti-predator tactics within populations. These results will reveal the potential role of human activities for driving impoverishment in behavioural variation in hunted large herbivores, a critical component for the resilience of wild populations to environmental modifications linked to global change. Therefore, by combining new data and original approaches based on the intensive monitoring of individuals in long-term studies of large herbivores across Europe, AnthropoFEAR will provide an integrative view of the potential consequences of the return of large carnivores for their prey in anthropogenic ecosystems.

Early-life conditions have pervasive and far-reaching consequences for the life history of most animals. In long-lived species, many phenotypic traits that are expressed in adulthood depends on the environmental conditions encountered during early life, from early pregnancy to weaning. The developmental history of an organism thus influences the outcome of the interaction with its current environment at each life stage, with extensive implications for population dynamics and the evolution of life histories. Carry-over effects are events, processes or experiences that occur during a given stage of an individual development and that alter the state or condition of the individual in a later stage. Although movement is a key behaviour linking environmental conditions to an individual’s fitness, how early life conditions and its interplay with subsequent events influence movement, and how it relates to phenotype and performance during adulthood remains largely unexplored. CARRY-MOVE will fill this gap by evaluating the roles of early life conditions on the ontogeny of movement, and their carry-over impacts on movement during adulthood and ultimately, on performance. Our central objective is to explore the direct and delayed pathways by which global changes impact the lifetime track of individuals and, in turn, the population dynamics of large herbivores with contrasting life histories. In WP1, using 2 exceptional long term study sites with marked juveniles, we will link early conditions and experience to early and later movements and individual performance. In WP2, we will evaluate the effects of between- and within-cohort variation in early life conditions on adult behaviour and movement using a larger range of species. Finally, using worldwide datasets, we will assess in WP3 whether the response of adult movement tactics to early life conditions varies according to a range of structuring factors known to shape life history variation.