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Unexpected changes in community size structure in a natural warming experiment

Nature Climate Change volume 7, pages 659–663 (2017)Cite this article

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Abstract

Natural ecosystems typically consist of many small and few large organisms1,2,3,4. The scaling of this negative relationship between body mass and abundance has important implications for resource partitioning and energy usage5,6,7. Global warming over the next century is predicted to favour smaller organisms8,9,10,11,12, producing steeper mass–abundance scaling13 and a less efficient transfer of biomass through the food web5. Here, we show that the opposite effect occurs in a natural warming experiment involving 13 whole-stream ecosystems within the same catchment, which span a temperature gradient of 5–25 °C. We introduce a mechanistic model that shows how the temperature dependence of basal resource carrying capacity can account for these previously unexpected results. If nutrient supply increases with temperature to offset the rising metabolic demand of primary producers, there will be sufficient resources to sustain larger consumers at higher trophic levels. These new data and the model that explains them highlight important exceptions to some commonly assumed ‘rules’ about responses to warming in natural ecosystems.

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Figure 1: Map of the geothermal streams and effects of temperature on mass–abundance (MN) scaling.
Figure 2: A mechanistic model helps reveal the underlying processes of the stream ecosystems.

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Acknowledgements

We thank J. Reiss for meiofauna and protist data, N. Craig for laboratory work, A. Moustakas for advice on data analysis, G. M. Gíslason and J. S. Ólafsson for providing research support and facilities, and G. Yvon-Durocher, S. Pawar, M. Trimmer and B. Kordas for helpful comments on earlier drafts. We acknowledge funding from NERC (NE/I009280/2, NE/F013124/1, NE/L011840/1, NE/M020843/1), the Royal Society (RG140601), the British Ecological Society (4009-4884), the National Special Water Program (No. 2009ZX07210-009), the China Scholarship Council (No. 201206730022), the Department of Environmental Protection of Shandong Province (SDHBPJ-ZB-08), the German Research Foundation (FZT 118), the James S. McDonnell Foundation, and NSF (1442595).

Author information

Author notes

  1. Eoin J. O’Gorman and Lei Zhao: These authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Imperial College London, Silwood Park Campus, Buckhurst Road, Ascot, Berkshire, SL5 7PY, UK

    Eoin J. O’Gorman, Lei Zhao, Georgina Adams & Guy Woodward

  2. Research Center for Engineering Ecology and Nonlinear Science, North China Electric Power University, Beijing, 102206, China

    Lei Zhao & Huayong Zhang

  3. Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Kansas Biological Survey, University of Kansas, 2041 Haworth Hall 1200 Sunnyside Avenue Lawrence, Kansas, 66045, USA

    Lei Zhao & Daniel C. Reuman

  4. School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, Queen Mary University of London, Mile End Road, London, E1 4NS, UK

    Doris E. Pichler & Alex Seeney

  5. NIVA, Norwegian Institute for Water Research, Gaustadalléen, 21, NO-0349, Oslo, Norway

    Nikolai Friberg

  6. German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig, Deutscher Platz 5, 04103, Leipzig, Germany

    Björn C. Rall

  7. Institute of Ecology, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Dornburger Str. 159, 07743, Jena, Germany

    Björn C. Rall

  8. Laboratory of Populations, Rockefeller University, New York, New York, 10065, USA

    Daniel C. Reuman

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Contributions

G.W., N.F. and D.C.R. were responsible for funding application, research design, and planning. E.J.O’G., D.E.P., G.A. and A.S. collected the data. E.J.O’G., B.C.R. and L.Z. analysed the data. L.Z., D.C.R. and H.Z. did the modelling. All authors wrote the paper.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Eoin J. O’Gorman, Daniel C. Reuman or Guy Woodward.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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O’Gorman, E., Zhao, L., Pichler, D. et al. Unexpected changes in community size structure in a natural warming experiment. Nature Clim Change 7, 659–663 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate3368

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