Facility Metatron
Parent institution: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Active since 2010
Active through March to October
Cote, Julien
email: julien.cote@univ-tlse3.fr
Guillaume, Olivier
email: olivier.guillaume@sete.cnrs.fr
This facility is located on the Commune of Caumont in Ariège (France) and has been operational since 2011. It comprises 48 habitats enclosed with insect-proof nets, each with a surface of 100-m² and a height of 2-m in which we can monitor and manipulate climatic conditions (temperature, humidity or solar radiation) thanks to shutters and sprinklers and manipulate species movements among units with corridors. Each enclosure acts as a mini ecosystem, with natural vegetation and insect communities and a relatively wide variety of thermal microhabitats (shaded, dense, and diverse vegetation, sun-battered rocks and logs, and ponds).
Diversity within these enclosed habitats is relatively high, with more than 140 plant species (~50 species per enclosure) and 123 invertebrate families (~40 invertebrate families per enclosure) found within the enclosures, compared to 134 plant species and 106 invertebrate families found in the nearby outside habitat. Enclosures can be connected by corridors which allow species to freely disperse from one unit to another.
Country: France
Latitude: +43 01 25.2
Longitude: + 1 05 34.5
Nearest town: Saint Girons 09200
Distance from neaerst town: 10 km
Predicting the consequences of climate change and landscape fragmentation on biodiversity and ecosystem functioning is a pressing challenge. However, uncertainties in these predictions remain large because most current empirical and theoretical studies 1) overlook the diversity of climate-change effects at all biological levels, from genes to ecosystems, and their intertwined nature and 2) investigate climate and fragmentation separately while they likely have interactive effects through modified species fluxes in the landscape. This incomplete vision hampers the development of effective mitigation strategies.
The Metatron allows the manipulation of climatic conditions and species movements in a set of wet grassland mesocosms hosting naturally diverse vegetation and invertebrate communities. This facility is therefore used to study the respective and interactive effects of climate warming and landscape fragmentation on all levels of biological organizations.
The climatic conditions in each enclosed habitat and the movements of species between habitats can be manipulated. This facility therefore allows to mimic simultaneously a climate change (e.g. temperature and/or humidity) and fragmented habitats and to study synergetic and antagonist effects of both elements of global change- interactions that are crucially needed for accurate predictions about global changes. Compared to lab warming experiment, the Metatron further provides semi-controlled environments with enclosures built on a wet grassland habitat with diverse and abundant vegetation hosting a self-maintaining invertebrate community. These semi-natural conditions permit the investigation of direct effects of climate and fragmentation (e.g. temperature-induce changes), the effects mediated by changes in species interactions (e.g. diet shifts, host-microorganism interactions) and therefore the ecological and evolutionary consequences of environmental changes.
The thermal regulation is done through a warming effect from the insect-proof nets and the shutters. The insect-proof nets create ~ 3 °C warmer conditions in the enclosed habitats than the outside. Motor-driven shutters allow reducing this warming effect and obtaining similar temperature than the outside. Our thermal manipulation is therefore dependent on the climatic conditions outside and cannot be heated to temperatures more than 3-4 °C than the outside. A system of sprinklers also allows watering enclosures and manipulating the humidity, but we do not have a drying system. Our human resources are also very limited and only allow to maintain the facility, but not to help for field work and data collecting.
breeding facilities for birds, reptiles, amphibians, invertabrates and plants, controlled temperature fridges
Experiments duration: Weeks, Months, Years, Decades;
Total area: 7000 m²
Available area: 7000 m²
Half is used by a local project until 2025unit size: 100 m²
units interconnected by 1 corridor 10mx10mx2m populations cages 19m x 0.75 corridorsReplicates number: 48
Electricity available on site.
Years measured:
Mean Temperature: 12 °C
February Mean Temperature: 5.1 °C
July Mean Temperature: 20.2 °C
Mean Annual Speed: m/s
Max. Annual Speed: m/s
Dominant Direction:
Precipitation type: Rain;
Total annual precipitation: 772 mm
Mean snow cover duration: 0 days
| Variable | Ecosystem | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Warming | Grassland | Active |
| Precip | Grassland | Active |
| Hydro | Grassland | Active |
| Habitatfrag | Grassland | Active |
| Warming | Wetland | Active |
| Precip | Wetland | Active |
| Hydro | Wetland | Active |
| Habitatfrag | Wetland | Active |
Up to 65 people
Up to 65 people
No visitors allowed.
Up to 28 beds
Showers on site
Laundry on site