Temperature variability alters the stability and thresholds for collapse of interacting species.

ABSTRACT: Temperature variability and extremes can have profound impacts on populations and ecological communities. Predicting impacts of thermal variability poses a challenge, because it has both direct physiological effects and indirect effects through species interactions. In addition, differences in thermal performance between predators and prey and nonlinear averaging of temperature-dependent performance can result in complex and counterintuitive population dynamics in response to climate change. Yet the combined consequences of these effects remain underexplored. Here, modelling temperature-dependent predator-prey dynamics, we study how changes in temperature variability affect population size, collapse and stable coexistence of both predator and prey, relative to under constant environments o

SUBMITTER: Dee LE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7662192 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature