A simple model predicts how warming simplifies wild food webs

O’Gorman, Eoin J.; Petchey, Owen L.; Faulkner, Katy J.; Gallo, Bruno; Gordon, Timothy; Neto-Cerejeira, Joana; Ólafsson, Jón S.; Pichler, Doris E.; Thompson, Murray S. A.; Woodward, Guy

doi:10.1038/s41558-019-0513-x

Cited by 65 publications

(85 citation statements)

References 46 publications

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“…Higher temperatures may increase top-down control in systems where size differences between predator and prey are large and prey cannot outgrow the predation window, but may otherwise result in the opposite [50], through a loss of predators owing to lack of prey of vulnerable sizes. Shortening of food chains and simplifications of food webs at higher temperatures have been observed in gradients across geothermically heated stream food webs [49]. It is also suggested to have occurred in the whole-ecosystem warming experiment [7] illustrated in figure 2, inferred from analyses of perch diets and top-down effects in a predator-exclosure experiment therein [91].…”

Section: (B) Warming-induced Collapse Of Predatorsmentioning

confidence: 89%

Individual variation and interactions explain food web responses to global warming

Gårdmark

Huss

2020

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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Understanding food web responses to global warming, and their consequences for conservation and management, requires knowledge on how responses vary both among and within species. Warming can reduce both species richness and biomass production. However, warming responses observed at different levels of biological organization may seem contradictory. For example, higher temperatures commonly lead to faster individual body growth but can decrease biomass production of fishes. Here we show that the key to resolve this contradiction is intraspecific variation, because (i) community dynamics emerge from interactions among individuals, and (ii) ecological interactions, physiological processes and warming effects often vary over life history. By combining insights from temperature-dependent dynamic models of simple food webs, observations over large temperature gradients and findings from short-term mesocosm and multi-decadal whole-ecosystem warming experiments, we resolve mechanisms by which warming waters can affect food webs via individual-level responses and review their empirical support. We identify a need for warming experiments on food webs manipulating population size structures to test these mechanisms. We stress that within-species variation in both body size, temperature responses and ecological interactions are key for accurate predictions and appropriate conservation efforts for fish production and food web function under a warming climate. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Integrative research perspectives on marine conservation'.

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Section: (B) Warming-induced Collapse Of Predatorsmentioning

confidence: 89%

Individual variation and interactions explain food web responses to global warming

Gårdmark

Huss

2020

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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“…Food web for a stream in the Hengill valley, where circles are species, lines are feeding interactions (described in O’Gorman et al, ) and the thickness of the lines is the relative biomass of each resource species in that predator's diet. Black circles and lines correspond to the organisms used in this study and predatory links to them.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Consistent temperature dependence of functional response parameters and their use in predicting population abundance

Archer

Sohlström

Gallo

et al. 2019

Journal of Animal Ecology

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Global warming is one of the greatest threats to the persistence of populations: increased metabolic demands should strengthen pairwise species interactions, which could destabilize food webs at the higher organizational levels. Quantifying the temperature dependence of consumer–resource interactions is thus essential for predicting ecological responses to warming.We explored feeding interactions between different predator–prey pairs in controlled‐temperature chambers and in a system of naturally heated streams. We found consistent temperature dependence of attack rates across experimental settings, though the magnitude and activation energy of attack rate were specific to each predator, which varied in mobility and foraging mode.We used these parameters along with metabolic rate measurements to estimate energetic efficiency and population abundance with warming. Energetic efficiency accurately estimated field abundance of a mobile predator that struggled to meet its metabolic demands, but was a poor predictor for a sedentary predator that operated well below its energetic limits. Temperature effects on population abundance may thus be strongly dependent on whether organisms are regulated by their own energy intake or interspecific interactions.Given the widespread use of functional response parameters in ecological modelling, reconciling outcomes from laboratory and field studies increases the confidence and precision with which we can predict warming impacts on natural systems.

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“…The increase in growth is predicted to scale with temperature in the same way as the metabolic rate, hence with a c. 2.5‐fold increase for each 10 °C increase in temperature (Brown, Gillooly, Allen, Savage & West, 2004; Grady, Enquist, Dettweiler‐Robinson, Wright & Smith, 2014). This metabolic temperature‐sensitivity of growth is included in most modelling studies that predict the long‐term effects of changing temperatures due to climate change on ectothermic organisms, from individuals to communities and from local environments to the global ocean, for example, for fish see Cheung, Bruggeman and Butenschön (2018) and Carozza, Bianchi and Galbraith (2019), see for an alternative approach O’Gorman et al (2019).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Global analysis of fish growth rates shows weaker responses to temperature than metabolic predictions

Denderen

Gislason

Heuvel

et al. 2020

Global Ecol. Biogeogr.

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Aim: Higher temperatures increase the metabolic rate of ectothermic organisms up to a certain level and make them grow faster. This temperature-sensitivity of growth is frequently used to predict the long-term effects of climate warming on ectotherms. Yet, realized growth also depends on ecological factors and evolutionary adaptation. Here we study whether faster growth is observed along temperature clines within and between marine fish species from polar to tropical regions. Location: Global.

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A simple model predicts how warming simplifies wild food webs

Cited by 65 publications

References 46 publications

Individual variation and interactions explain food web responses to global warming

Individual variation and interactions explain food web responses to global warming

Consistent temperature dependence of functional response parameters and their use in predicting population abundance

Global analysis of fish growth rates shows weaker responses to temperature than metabolic predictions

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