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Research article2018Peer reviewedOpen access

Temperature-dependent body size effects determine population responses to climate warming

Lindmark, Max; Huss, Magnus; Ohlberger, Jan; Gardmark, Anna

Abstract

Current understanding of animal population responses to rising temperatures is based on the assumption that biological rates such as metabolism, which governs fundamental ecological processes, scale independently with body size and temperature, despite empirical evidence for interactive effects. Here, we investigate the consequences of interactive temperature- and size scaling of vital rates for the dynamics of populations experiencing warming using a stage-structured consumer-resource model. We show that interactive scaling alters population and stage-specific responses to rising temperatures, such that warming can induce shifts in population regulation and stage-structure, influence community structure and govern population responses to mortality. Analysing experimental data for 20 fish species, we found size-temperature interactions in intraspecific scaling of metabolic rate to be common. Given the evidence for size-temperature interactions and the ubiquity of size structure in animal populations, we argue that accounting for size-specific temperature effects is pivotal for understanding how warming affects animal populations and communities.

Keywords

Allometric scaling; climate change; communities; consumer-resource dynamics; dynamic modelling; food webs; intraspecific competition; metabolic rate; predator-prey interactions; size structure

Published in

Ecology Letters
2018, volume: 21, number: 2, pages: 181-189
Publisher: WILEY

SLU Authors

Global goals (SDG)

SDG13 Climate action
SDG14 Life below water

UKÄ Subject classification

Ecology

Publication identifier

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/ele.12880

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/94310