The importance of inter-individual variation in predicting species' responses to global change drivers.

ABSTRACT: Inter-individual variation in phenotypic traits has long been considered as "noise" rather than meaningful phenotypic variation, with biological studies almost exclusively generating and reporting average responses for populations and species' average responses. Here, we compare the use of an individual approach in the investigation of extracellular acid-base regulation by the purple sea urchin Paracentrotus lividus challenged with elevated pCO₂ and temperature conditions, with a more traditional approach which generates and formally compares mean values. We detected a high level of inter-individual variation in acid-base regulation parameters both within and between treatments. Comparing individual and mean values for the first (apparent) dissociation constant of

SUBMITTER: Guscelli E 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6476784 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature