Lifelong consequences of growing up during an extreme weather event

My PhD project focuses on studying how the morphological and physiological consequences of growing up during an extreme weather event, for example a heatwave or a period of unusually cold temperatures, manifest over a lifetime and between generations. Research has shown that exposure to high or low temperatures during pre-and perinatal development have large influence over how endothermic animals deal with heat or cold as juveniles. We know comparatively little about how whether such phenotypic responses are ephemeral or permanent. Since extreme weather events are predicted to increase in both intensity and frequency there is an increase in the likelihood that an animal will develop in a set of weather conditions that it will not experience again as an adult.