Climate warming strengthens indirect interactions in an old‐field food web

Barton, Brandon T.; Beckerman, Andrew P.; Schmitz, Oswald J.

doi:10.1890/08-2254.1

Cited by 138 publications

(169 citation statements)

References 33 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

146

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…The stronger top-down control at high temperatures likely resulted from changes in the structure or metabolism of the zooplankton community [32]. Our results agree with those from grassland systems where warming strengthened the top-down effects of spider predators over grasshoppers and plants [64]. Stronger top-down control by predators may therefore be a pervasive feature of future, warmer ecosystems.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 79%

Warming shifts top-down and bottom-up control of pond food web structure and function

Shurin

Clasen

Greig

et al. 2012

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

251

241

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The effects of global and local environmental changes are transmitted through networks of interacting organisms to shape the structure of communities and the dynamics of ecosystems. We tested the impact of elevated temperature on the top-down and bottom-up forces structuring experimental freshwater pond food webs in western Canada over 16 months. Experimental warming was crossed with treatments manipulating the presence of planktivorous fish and eutrophication through enhanced nutrient supply. We found that higher temperatures produced top-heavy food webs with lower biomass of benthic and pelagic producers, equivalent biomass of zooplankton, zoobenthos and pelagic bacteria, and more pelagic viruses. Eutrophication increased the biomass of all organisms studied, while fish had cascading positive effects on periphyton, phytoplankton and bacteria, and reduced biomass of invertebrates. Surprisingly, virus biomass was reduced in the presence of fish, suggesting the possibility for complex mechanisms of top-down control of the lytic cycle. Warming reduced the effects of eutrophication on periphyton, and magnified the already strong effects of fish on phytoplankton and bacteria. Warming, fish and nutrients all increased whole-system rates of net production despite their distinct impacts on the distribution of biomass between producers and consumers, plankton and benthos, and microbes and macrobes. Our results indicate that warming exerts a host of indirect effects on aquatic food webs mediated through shifts in the magnitudes of top-down and bottom-up forcing.

show abstract

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 79%

Warming shifts top-down and bottom-up control of pond food web structure and function

Shurin

Clasen

Greig

et al. 2012

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

251

241

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…An increasing strength of plantherbivore interactions has been found to coincide with rising temperatures (Barton et al, 2009;O'Connor, 2009;Shurin et al, 2012). Compared to the amount of studies currently investigating the effects of global warming on trophic interactions, there seems to be only relatively few studies investigating the role of omnivores in this situation (e.g., Boersma et al (2016)).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The effect of temperature on herbivory by the omnivorous ectotherm snail Lymnaea stagnalis

et al. 2016

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Rising temperatures likely affect the trophic interactions in temperate regions as global warming progresses. An open question is how a temperature rise may affect consumer pressure and plant abundance in shallow aquatic ecosystems, where most consumers are omnivorous. Interestingly, herbivory (plant-eating) is more prevalent toward low latitudes in ectotherms such as fish and aquatic invertebrates, and this may be temperature driven. We used pond snails (Lymnaea stagnalis L.) as a model aquatic ectotherm species and tested their consumption of both animal prey (Gammarus pulex L.) and plant material (Potamogeton lucens L.) at three different temperatures (15, 20, and 25°C). Higher temperatures led to higher consumption rates by the omnivore on both plant food and animal prey when fed separately. When the food was offered simultaneously, the pond snails consistently preferred animal prey over plant material at all tested temperatures. However, the omnivore did consume plant material even though they had enough animal prey available to them. Based on our experiments, we conclude that with increasing temperatures, L. stagnalis will only increase their consumption rates but not change food preference. Further studies are needed to test the generality of our findings across aquatic species to predict the effect of warming on aquatic plant consumption.

show abstract

“…Species vary in their individual response to climate change that may lead to the disruption in both antagonistic [20,21] and mutualistic interactions between species [22,23]. Stronger disruptions are likely to occur if the sensitivity to climate change differs not only between species, but also between trophic levels [18,19,24,25]. Crucially, the disruption of these interactions can affect food-web dynamics and evolutionary processes [16,17,19,26].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Climate change effects on above- and below-ground interactions in a dryland ecosystem

González‐Megías

Menéndez

2012

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Individual species respond to climate change by altering their abundance, distribution and phenology. Less is known, however, about how climate change affects multitrophic interactions, and its consequences for food-web dynamics. Here, we investigate the effect of future changes in rainfall patterns on detritivore-plant -herbivore interactions in a semiarid region in southern Spain by experimentally manipulating rainfall intensity and frequency during late spring -early summer. Our results show that rain intensity changes the effect of below-ground detritivores on both plant traits and above-ground herbivore abundance. Enhanced rain altered the interaction between detritivores and plants affecting flower and fruit production, and also had a direct effect on fruit and seed set. Despite this finding, there was no net effect on plant reproductive output. This finding supports the idea that plants will be less affected by climatic changes than by other trophic levels. Enhanced rain also affected the interaction between detritivores and free-living herbivores. The effect, however, was apparent only for generalist and not for specialist herbivores, demonstrating a differential response to climate change within the same trophic level. The complex responses found in this study suggest that future climate change will affect trophic levels and their interactions differentially, making extrapolation from individual species' responses and from one ecosystem to another very difficult.

show abstract

Climate warming strengthens indirect interactions in an old‐field food web

Cited by 138 publications

References 33 publications

Warming shifts top-down and bottom-up control of pond food web structure and function

Warming shifts top-down and bottom-up control of pond food web structure and function

The effect of temperature on herbivory by the omnivorous ectotherm snail Lymnaea stagnalis

Climate change effects on above- and below-ground interactions in a dryland ecosystem

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About