Size-based ecological interactions drive food web responses to climate warming.

ABSTRACT: Predicting climate change impacts on animal communities requires knowledge of how physiological effects are mediated by ecological interactions. Food-dependent growth and within-species size variation depend on temperature and affect community dynamics through feedbacks between individual performance and population size structure. Still, we know little about how warming affects these feedbacks. Using a dynamic stage-structured biomass model with food-, size- and temperature-dependent life history processes, we analyse how temperature affects coexistence, stability and size structure in a tri-trophic food chain, and find that warming effects on community stability depend on ecological interactions. Predator biomass densities generally decline with warming - gradually or through collapses -

SUBMITTER: Lindmark M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6849876 | biostudies-literature | 2019 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature