Changing climate and reorganized species interactions modify community responses to climate variability.

ABSTRACT: While an array of ecological mechanisms has been shown to stabilize natural community dynamics, how the effectiveness of these mechanisms-including both their direction (stabilizing vs. destabilizing) and strength-shifts under a changing climate remains unknown. Using a 35-y dataset (1985 to 2019) from a desert stream in central Arizona (USA), we found that as annual mean air temperature rose 1°C and annual mean precipitation reduced by 40% over the last two decades, macroinvertebrate communities experienced dramatic changes, from relatively stable states during the first 15 y of this study to wildly fluctuating states highly sensitive to climate variability in the last 10 y. Asynchronous species responses to climatic variability, the primary mechanism historically undergirding community s

SUBMITTER: Wang J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10523507 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature