Melanin-based colour polymorphism responding to climate change.

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State: Public
Version: Final published version
Serval ID
serval:BIB_4844D722281D
Type
Article: article from journal or magazin.
Publication sub-type
Review (review): journal as complete as possible of one specific subject, written based on exhaustive analyses from published work.
Collection
Publications
Institution
Title
Melanin-based colour polymorphism responding to climate change.
Journal
Global Change Biology
Author(s)
Roulin A.
ISSN
1365-2486 (Electronic)
ISSN-L
1354-1013
Publication state
Published
Issued date
2014
Peer-reviewed
Oui
Volume
20
Number
11
Pages
3344-3350
Language
english
Abstract
Climate warming leads to a decrease in biodiversity. Organisms can deal with the new prevailing environmental conditions by one of two main routes, namely evolving new genetic adaptations or through phenotypic plasticity to modify behaviour and physiology. Melanin-based colouration has important functions in animals including a role in camouflage and thermoregulation, protection against UV-radiation and pathogens and, furthermore, genes involved in melanogenesis can pleiotropically regulate behaviour and physiology. In this article, I review the current evidence that differently coloured individuals are differentially sensitive to climate change. Predicting which of dark or pale colour variants (or morphs) will be more penalized by climate change will depend on the adaptive function of melanism in each species as well as how the degree of colouration covaries with behaviour and physiology. For instance, because climate change leads to a rise in temperature and UV-radiation and dark colouration plays a role in UV-protection, dark individuals may be less affected from global warming, if this phenomenon implies more solar radiation particularly in habitats of pale individuals. In contrast, as desertification increases, pale colouration may expand in those regions, whereas dark colourations may expand in regions where humidity is predicted to increase. Dark colouration may be also indirectly selected by climate warming because genes involved in the production of melanin pigments confer resistance to a number of stressful factors including those associated with climate warming. Furthermore, darker melanic individuals are commonly more aggressive than paler conspecifics, and hence they may better cope with competitive interactions due to invading species that expand their range in northern latitudes and at higher altitudes. To conclude, melanin may be a major component involved in adaptation to climate warming, and hence in animal populations melanin-based colouration is likely to change as an evolutionary or plastic response to climate warming.
Keywords
climate change, colour polymorphism, melanin, melanocortin, phenoloxidase, pleiotropy
Pubmed
Web of science
Open Access
Yes
Create date
29/04/2014 16:53
Last modification date
20/08/2019 13:55
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