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Ecological complexity buffers the impacts of future climate on marine consumers

Abstract

Ecological complexity represents a network of interacting components that either propagate or counter the effects of environmental change on individuals and communities1,2,3. Yet, our understanding of the ecological imprint of ocean acidification (elevated CO2) and climate change (elevated temperature) is largely based on reports of negative effects on single species in simplified laboratory systems4,5. By combining a large mesocosm experiment with a global meta-analysis, we reveal the capacity of consumers (fish and crustaceans) to resist the impacts of elevated CO2. While individual behaviours were impaired by elevated CO2, consumers could restore their performances in more complex environments that allowed for compensatory processes. Consequently, consumers maintained key traits such as foraging, habitat selection and predator avoidance despite elevated CO2 and sustained their populations. Our observed increase in risk-taking under elevated temperature, however, predicts greater vulnerability of consumers to predation. Yet, CO2 as a resource boosted the biomass of consumers through species interactions and may stabilize communities by countering the negative effects of elevated temperature. We conclude that compensatory dynamics inherent in the complexity of nature can buffer the impacts of future climate on species and their communities.

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Fig. 1: Mesocosm study showing how the negative effects of ocean acidification on consumers can be buffered and reversed through ecological complexity.
Fig. 2: Mesocosm study showing how warming can increase risk-taking behaviour in consumers.
Fig. 3: Meta-analysis on the effects of ocean acidification on the performance of fish and decapods at different levels of ecological complexity.
Fig. 4: Conceptual framework of how increasing ecological complexity can buffer the direct negative effects of future climate on marine consumers and drive community dynamics through biotic interactions.

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Acknowledgements

We thank all of the students, W. Hutchinson, M. Gluis, T. Kildea and M. Brustolin for their help with the mesocosm project. Financial support was received through the Australian Research Council Future Fellowship Grant FT120100183 (to I.N.) and FT0991953 (to S.D.C.) and through a grant from the Environment Institute (the University of Adelaide). C.M.F. was supported by a Science Without Borders PhD scholarship through CAPES (Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel) Brazil (scholarship no. 13058134).

Author contributions

S.U.G., I.N. S.D.C and C.M.F designed the study, S.U.G., E.M., A.B. and C.M.F. performed the research, S.U.G. analysed the data, S.U.G. conducted the meta-analysis, S.U.G., I.N. and S.D.C. wrote the manuscript and all authors contributed to writing the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Ivan Nagelkerken.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Results, Supplementary Methods, Supplementary Tables 1–18, Supplementary Figure 1–7, Supplementary References

Supplementary Table 19

List of all experiments considered in the meta-analysis with their design characteristics

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Goldenberg, S.U., Nagelkerken, I., Marangon, E. et al. Ecological complexity buffers the impacts of future climate on marine consumers. Nature Clim Change 8, 229–233 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-018-0086-0

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