Spatiotemporal thermal variation drives diversity trends in experimental landscapes.

ABSTRACT: Temperature is a fundamental driver of species' vital rates and thus coexistence, extinctions and community composition. While temperature is neither static in space nor in time, little work has incorporated spatiotemporal dynamics into community-level investigations of thermal variation. We conducted a microcosm experiment using ciliate protozoa to test the effects of temperatures fluctuating synchronously or asynchronously on communities in two-patch landscapes connected by short or long corridors. We monitored the abundance of each species for 4 weeks-equivalent to ~28 generations-measuring the effects of four temperature regimes and two corridor lengths on community diversity and composition. While corridor length significantly altered the trajectory of diversity change in the communit

SUBMITTER: Wolfe E 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10108128 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature