Climate change could drive marine food web collapse through altered trophic flows and cyanobacterial proliferation.

ABSTRACT: Global warming and ocean acidification are forecast to exert significant impacts on marine ecosystems worldwide. However, most of these projections are based on ecological proxies or experiments on single species or simplified food webs. How energy fluxes are likely to change in marine food webs in response to future climates remains unclear, hampering forecasts of ecosystem functioning. Using a sophisticated mesocosm experiment, we model energy flows through a species-rich multilevel food web, with live habitats, natural abiotic variability, and the potential for intra- and intergenerational adaptation. We show experimentally that the combined stress of acidification and warming reduced energy flows from the first trophic level (primary producers and detritus) to the second (herbivores),

SUBMITTER: Ullah H 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5760012 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature