Tipping Points, Thresholds and the Keystone Role of Physiology in Marine Climate Change Research

Monaco, Cristián J.; Helmuth, Brian

doi:10.1016/b978-0-12-385529-9.00003-2

Cited by 75 publications

(69 citation statements)

References 166 publications

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“…Beukema et al, 2009) and the subsequent impacts on ecological services that precede large-scale populationor ecosystem-scale collapse (Mumby et al, 2011). Such effects can only be predicted using approaches that are able to relate changes in the environment to sublethal responses of organisms (Monaco and Helmuth, 2011), including the potential for behavioural buffering of changing climatic impacts (Bogert, 1949;Kearney et al, 2009b;Williams et al, 2008). Thus, many of Schoener's arguments (Schoener, 1986) still apply, but for somewhat different reasons.…”

Section: Introduction: Mechanistic Niche Models and Why We Need Themmentioning

confidence: 99%

Biomechanics meets the ecological niche: the importance of temporal data resolution

Kearney

Matzelle

Helmuth

2012

Journal of Experimental Biology

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113

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SUMMARY The emerging field of mechanistic niche modelling aims to link the functional traits of organisms to their environments to predict survival, reproduction, distribution and abundance. This approach has great potential to increase our understanding of the impacts of environmental change on individuals, populations and communities by providing functional connections between physiological and ecological response to increasingly available spatial environmental data. By their nature, such mechanistic models are more data intensive in comparison with the more widely applied correlative approaches but can potentially provide more spatially and temporally explicit predictions, which are often needed by decision makers. A poorly explored issue in this context is the appropriate level of temporal resolution of input data required for these models, and specifically the error in predictions that can be incurred through the use of temporally averaged data. Here, we review how biomechanical principles from heat-transfer and metabolic theory are currently being used as foundations for mechanistic niche models and consider the consequences of different temporal resolutions of environmental data for modelling the niche of a behaviourally thermoregulating terrestrial lizard. We show that fine-scale temporal resolution (daily) data can be crucial for unbiased inference of climatic impacts on survival, growth and reproduction. This is especially so for species with little capacity for behavioural buffering, because of behavioural or habitat constraints, and for detecting temporal trends. However, coarser-resolution data (long-term monthly averages) can be appropriate for mechanistic studies of climatic constraints on distribution and abundance limits in thermoregulating species at broad spatial scales.

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Section: Introduction: Mechanistic Niche Models and Why We Need Themmentioning

confidence: 99%

Biomechanics meets the ecological niche: the importance of temporal data resolution

Kearney

Matzelle

Helmuth

2012

Journal of Experimental Biology

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113

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“…Biophysical studies have emphasized that body temperature varies not only as a function of microhabitat (Denny et al, 2011), but also with factors such as body size, which can affect an organism's thermal inertia (Turner, 1988;Helmuth, 1998;Pincebourde et al, 2009). These studies have also been used successfully to explore the impacts of environmental change in terms of growth and reproduction (Kearney et al, 2010;Schneider et al, 2010;Sarà et al, 2011), and rates of predation and thus interaction strengths between species (Sanford, 2002;Yamane and Gilman, 2009;Monaco and Helmuth, 2011).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Survival and arm abscission are linked to regional heterothermy in an intertidal sea star

Pincebourde

Sanford

Helmuth

2013

Journal of Experimental Biology

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SUMMARYBody temperature is a more pertinent variable to physiological stress than ambient air temperature. Modeling and empirical studies on the impacts of climate change on ectotherms usually assume that body temperature within organisms is uniform. However, many ectotherms show significant within-body temperature heterogeneity. The relationship between regional heterothermy and the response of ectotherms to sublethal and lethal conditions remains underexplored. We quantified withinbody thermal heterogeneity in an intertidal sea star (Pisaster ochraceus) during aerial exposure at low tide to examine the lethal and sublethal effects of temperatures of different body regions. In manipulative experiments, we measured the temperature of the arms and central disc, as well as survival and arm abscission under extreme aerial conditions. Survival was related strongly to central disc temperature. Arms were generally warmer than the central disc in individuals that survived aerial heating, but we found the reverse in those that died. When the central disc reached sublethal temperatures of 31-35°C, arms reached temperatures of 33-39°C, inducing arm abscission. The absolute temperature of individual arms was a poor predictor of arm abscission, but the arms lost were consistently the hottest at the within-individual scale. Therefore, the vital region of this sea star may remain below the lethal threshold under extreme conditions, possibly through water movement from the arms to the central disc and/or evaporative cooling, but at the cost of increased risk of arm abscission. Initiation of arm abscission seems to reflect a whole-organism response while death occurs as a result of stress acting directly on central disc tissues. Supplementary material available online at

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“…One straightforward way to conceptualize the impacts of climate change on an interacting species pair is to first consider where their performance falls relative to one another under current environmental conditions, and then to examine how shifts in those conditions might affect the relative performance of the interacting pair (Figure 2). In so doing, we can identify suites of environmental conditions that may result in particularly rapid ecological change based on their relationship with inherent nonlinearities and potential tipping points in ecological systems (Connell et al., 2017; Kroeker et al., 2016; Monaco & Helmuth, 2011). To illustrate this, we consider a case within a simple food web consisting of one producer and one consumer (Figure 3); note that competition or other forms of interspecific interaction can easily be diagrammed in the same way if appropriate units are used to define the axes.…”

Section: The Physiological Basis Of Ecological Phase Shiftsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Importantly, the sensitivity to changes can vary among interacting species so that, for example, an increase in temperature can have a positive impact on one species, while simultaneously negatively impacting individuals of another species within the same assemblage (Kordas et al. 2011; Monaco & Helmuth, 2011). …”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Conceptualizing ecosystem tipping points within a physiological framework

Harley

Connell

Doubleday

et al. 2017

Ecology and Evolution

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Connecting the nonlinear and often counterintuitive physiological effects of multiple environmental drivers to the emergent impacts on ecosystems is a fundamental challenge. Unfortunately, the disconnect between the way “stressors” (e.g., warming) is considered in organismal (physiological) and ecological (community) contexts continues to hamper progress. Environmental drivers typically elicit biphasic physiological responses, where performance declines at levels above and below some optimum. It is also well understood that species exhibit highly variable response surfaces to these changes so that the optimum level of any environmental driver can vary among interacting species. Thus, species interactions are unlikely to go unaltered under environmental change. However, while these nonlinear, species‐specific physiological relationships between environment and performance appear to be general, rarely are they incorporated into predictions of ecological tipping points. Instead, most ecosystem‐level studies focus on varying levels of “stress” and frequently assume that any deviation from “normal” environmental conditions has similar effects, albeit with different magnitudes, on all of the species within a community. We consider a framework that realigns the positive and negative physiological effects of changes in climatic and nonclimatic drivers with indirect ecological responses. Using a series of simple models based on direct physiological responses to temperature and ocean pCO 2, we explore how variation in environment‐performance relationships among primary producers and consumers translates into community‐level effects via trophic interactions. These models show that even in the absence of direct mortality, mismatched responses resulting from often subtle changes in the physical environment can lead to substantial ecosystem‐level change.

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Tipping Points, Thresholds and the Keystone Role of Physiology in Marine Climate Change Research

Cited by 75 publications

References 166 publications

Biomechanics meets the ecological niche: the importance of temporal data resolution

Biomechanics meets the ecological niche: the importance of temporal data resolution

Survival and arm abscission are linked to regional heterothermy in an intertidal sea star

Conceptualizing ecosystem tipping points within a physiological framework

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