Neurobiology and changing ecosystems: Toward understanding the impact of anthropogenic influences on neurons and circuits

Abstract

Rapid anthropogenic environmental changes, including those due to habitat contamination, degradation, and climate change, have far-reaching effects on biological systems that may outpace animals’ adaptive responses. Neurobiological systems mediate interactions between animals and their environments and evolved over millions of years to detect and respond to change. To gain an understanding of the adaptive capacity of nervous systems given an unprecedented pace of environmental change, mechanisms of physiology and behavior at the cellular and biophysical level must be examined. While behavioral changes resulting from anthropogenic activity are becoming increasingly described, identification and examination of the cellular, molecular, and circuit-level processes underlying those changes are profoundly underexplored. Hence, the field of neuroscience lacks predictive frameworks to describe which neurobiological systems may be resilient or vulnerable to rapidly changing ecosystems, or what modes of adaptation are represented in our natural world. In this review, we highlight examples of animal behavior modification and corresponding nervous system adaptation in response to rapid environmental change. The underlying cellular, molecular, and circuit-level component processes underlying these behaviors are not known and emphasize the unmet need for rigorous scientific enquiry into the neurobiology of changing ecosystems.

Do Individual Differences in Perception Affect Awareness of Climate Change?

“…Besides sensory pollution, climate change can influence adaptation behavior in animals through non-sensory physiological pathways [ 28 ]. Temperature changes impact the physiology of ectotherms, such as invertebrates and fishes.…”

Genomic Hotspots: Localized chromosome gene expansions identify lineage-specific innovations as targets for functional biodiversity and predictions of stress resilience

“…Yet, genomic data are generally not accompanied by molecular-functional knowledge. Furthermore, there are limited tools to evaluate adaptive potential from diverse lineages (20)(21)(22)25,28,29), and integrative approaches across fields, like neuroscience and conservation biology (20,25,28,(30)(31)(32).Homology-based annotation of gene function is commonly used in the absence of direct molecular knowledge, wherein sequence and increasingly structural similarities enable mapping of gene function in genetic models, like humans, Drosophila melanogaster, and Caenorhabditis elegans, to a target species(33-39). Still, gene families present in a target species but absent in a popular reference species can go mis-annotated or unannotated.…”

“…Yet, genomic data are generally not accompanied by molecular-functional knowledge. Furthermore, there are limited tools to evaluate adaptive potential from diverse lineages (20)(21)(22)25,28,29), and integrative approaches across fields, like neuroscience and conservation biology (20,25,28,(30)(31)(32).…”