Effects of Warming on Intraguild Predator Communities with Ontogenetic Diet Shifts

Abstract

Species interactions mediate how warming affects community composition via individual growth and population size structure. While predictions on how warming affects composition of size- or stage-structured communities have so far focused on linear (food chain) communities, mixed competition-predation interactions, such as intraguild predation, are common. Intraguild predation often results from changes in diet over ontogeny ("ontogenetic diet shifts") and strongly affects community composition and dynamics. Here, we study how warming affects a community of intraguild predators with ontogenetic diet shifts, consumers, and shared prey by analyzing a stage-structured bioenergetics multispecies model with temperature- and body size-dependent individual-level rates. We find that warming can strengthen competition and decrease predation, leading to a loss of a cultivation mechanism (the feedback between predation on and competition with consumers exerted by predators) and ultimately predator collapse. Furthermore, we show that the effect of warming on community composition depends on the extent of the ontogenetic diet shift and that warming can cause a sequence of community reconfigurations in species with partial diet shifts. Our findings contrast previous predictions concerning individual growth of predators and the mechanisms behind predator loss in warmer environments and highlight how feedbacks between temperature and intraspecific size structure are important for understanding such effects on community composition.

Keywords

temperature; food webs; competition; climate change; cultivation depensation; stage structure

Published in

American Naturalist
2021, volume: 198, number: 6, pages: 706-718
Publisher: UNIV CHICAGO PRESS

SLU Authors

• Thunell, Viktor

  • Department of Aquatic Resources (SLU Aqua), Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

• Lindmark, Max

  • Department of Aquatic Resources (SLU Aqua), Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

• Huss, Magnus

  • Department of Aquatic Resources (SLU Aqua), Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

• Gårdmark, Anna

  • Department of Aquatic Resources (SLU Aqua), Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

Global goals (SDG)

SDG13 Climate action

UKÄ Subject classification

Ecology

Publication identifier

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1086/716927

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/114153