Meeting Abstract
Individual animals differ consistently in both their physiology and behaviour. Jointly, this variation sets the ‘pace of life’ of individuals under different environmental conditions. Given the increased frequency of extreme weather events already occurring as a result of climate variability, the ability to adjust (or maintain) performance when faced with rapid environmental changes is likely to affect individual fitness. Using fish as examples, we here show how individual phenotypes vary in both their metabolic and behavioural flexibility when exposed to daily changes in temperature and oxygen availability (hypoxia). We show that phenotypes with high metabolic rates and more intense behaviours are less responsive to increased temperatures but more affected by hypoxia, with the opposite being true for phenotypes with a slower pace of life. This shows that the ability of different phenotypes to respond to rapid environmental changes is not the same across environmental contexts and suggests that any selection for specific phenotypes will depend on the environmental stressor the animals are faced with.
