Abstract

Species responses to climate change have been shown to vary in both direction and magnitude. Understanding these idiosyncratic responses is crucial if we are to predict extinction risk and set up efficient conservation strategies. The variations observed across species have been related to several species attributes including intrinsic traits such as physiological tolerances or life-history strategies but also to niche characteristics (e.g., niche breadth [NB], niche position [NP]). However, although previous studies have successfully linked species attributes to population dynamics or range shifts, few have considered synergistic effects to explain responses to climate variations. Here, we assessed whether five species attributes (fecundity, thermal safety margin, trophic position [TP], NB, and NP) explained interspecific differences in four parameters influencing population dynamics of 35 stream fish species at the French scale. We used Bayesian N-mixture models to estimate posterior distributions of the growth rate, the strength of density dependence, and the influence of both mean temperature and temperature variability on populations for each species. We then used phylogenetic generalized least squares (PGLS) models to investigate the influence of species attributes and their interactions on interspecific differences in each of the four parameter driving population dynamics. The percentage of variance explained by the PGLS models was relatively high (around 40% on average), indicating that species attributes are good predictors of species population dynamics. Furthermore, we showed that the influence of these single attributes was mediated by other attributes, especially NP and TP. Importantly, we found that models including interaction terms had greater support over simple additive models in explaining interspecific differences in population dynamics. Taken together, these results point to the importance of considering the interplay between species attributes in unraveling the mechanisms involved in population dynamics and understanding the vulnerability of species to global change.

Keywords

Bayesian inference; climate mean; climate variability; density dependence; growth rate; N-mixture models; trait-based approach; water temperature

Published in

Ecosphere
2018, Volume: 9, number: 1, article number: e02061

SLU Authors

• Chevalier, Mathieu

  • Department of Ecology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    
  • Paul Sabatier University, Toulouse III

Sustainable Development Goals

Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts
End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture


UKÄ Subject classification

Ecology


Publication identifier

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/ecs2.2061

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/93662