Vulnerability to climate change increases with trophic level in terrestrial organisms.

Autor: da Silva CRB; Department of Biology, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, USA; School of Biological Sciences, Monash University, Victoria, Australia. Electronic address: carmen.dasilva@uq.net.au., Beaman JE; College of Science and Engineering, Flinders University, South Australia, Australia., Youngblood JP; School of Life Sciences, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA; Department of Biology, Southern Oregon University, Ashland, OR, USA., Kellermann V; School of Biological Sciences, Monash University, Victoria, Australia., Diamond SE; Department of Biology, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, USA.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: The Science of the total environment [Sci Total Environ] 2023 Mar 20; Vol. 865, pp. 161049. Date of Electronic Publication: 2022 Dec 20.
DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.161049
Abstrakt: The resilience of ecosystem function under global climate change is governed by individual species vulnerabilities and the functional groups they contribute to (e.g. decomposition, primary production, pollination, primary, secondary and tertiary consumption). Yet it remains unclear whether species that contribute to different functional groups, which underpin ecosystem function, differ in their vulnerability to climate change. We used existing upper thermal limit data across a range of terrestrial species (N = 1701) to calculate species warming margins (degrees distance between a species upper thermal limit and the maximum environmental temperature they inhabit), as a metric of climate change vulnerability. We examined whether species that comprise different functional groups exhibit differential vulnerability to climate change, and if vulnerability trends change across geographic space while considering evolutionary history. Primary producers had the broadest warming margins across the globe (μ = 18.72 °C) and tertiary consumers had the narrowest warming margins (μ = 9.64 °C), where vulnerability tended to increase with trophic level. Warming margins had a nonlinear relationship (second-degree polynomial) with absolute latitude, where warming margins were narrowest at about 33°, and were broader at lower and higher absolute latitudes. Evolutionary history explained significant variation in species warming margins, as did the methodology used to estimate species upper thermal limits. We investigated if variation in body mass across the trophic levels could explain why higher trophic level organisms had narrower warming margins than lower trophic level organisms, however, we did not find support for this hypothesis. This study provides a critical first step in linking individual species vulnerabilities with whole ecosystem responses to climate change.
Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
(Copyright © 2022 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)
Databáze: MEDLINE
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