Using individual metabolism and body size to predict climate warming impacts on aquatic food webs
Lead Research Organisation:
Imperial College London
Department Name: Life Sciences
Abstract
This is a joint submission. Please see the main grant with PI Guy Woodward of Queen Mary University of London.
Organisations
Publications
Adams G
(2016)
Community management indicators can conflate divergent phenomena: two challenges and a decomposition-based solution
in Journal of Applied Ecology
Adams GL
(2013)
Diatoms can be an important exception to temperature-size rules at species and community levels of organization.
in Global change biology
Defriez E
(2017)
A global geography of synchrony for marine phytoplankton
in Global Ecology and Biogeography
Defriez EJ
(2016)
Climate change-related regime shifts have altered spatial synchrony of plankton dynamics in the North Sea.
in Global change biology
Ewers RM
(2013)
Using landscape history to predict biodiversity patterns in fragmented landscapes.
in Ecology letters
García-Carreras B
(2013)
Are changes in the mean or variability of climate signals more important for long-term stochastic growth rate?
in PloS one
Hudson L
(2012)
Cheddar: analysis and visualisation of ecological communities in R
in Methods in Ecology and Evolution
Hudson LN
(2013)
The relationship between body mass and field metabolic rate among individual birds and mammals.
in The Journal of animal ecology
Hudson LN
(2013)
A cure for the plague of parameters: constraining models of complex population dynamics with allometries.
in Proceedings. Biological sciences
O'Gorman E
(2012)
Global Change in Multispecies Systems Part 2
Reuman DC
(2014)
A metabolic perspective on competition and body size reductions with warming.
in The Journal of animal ecology
Reuman DC
(2014)
The marine diversity spectrum.
in The Journal of animal ecology
Sheppard L
(2015)
Changes in large-scale climate alter spatial synchrony of aphid pests
in Nature Climate Change
Signorile A
(2016)
Mixture or mosaic? Genetic patterns in UK grey squirrels support a human-mediated 'long-jump' invasion mechanism
in Diversity and Distributions
Signorile A
(2014)
Do founder size, genetic diversity and structure influence rates of expansion of North American grey squirrels in Europe?
in Diversity and Distributions
Signorile A
(2014)
Grey squirrels in central Italy: a new threat for endemic red squirrel subspecies
in Biological Invasions
Signorile A
(2016)
Using DNA profiling to investigate human-mediated translocations of an invasive species
in Biological Conservation
Sutherland W
(2012)
Identification of 100 fundamental ecological questions
in Journal of Ecology
Woodward G
(2012)
Climate change impacts in multispecies systems: drought alters food web size structure in a field experiment.
in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences
Yvon-Durocher G
(2011)
Across ecosystem comparisons of size structure: methods, approaches and prospects
in Oikos
| Description | Some important findings so far include showing for the first time that competition can be an important factor in body-size reductions widely observed in ectotherms under warming. For phytoplankton, cells are expected, based on our work, to have an accentuated competitive advantage for nutrient uptake and rapid growth in warmer waters. The same may be true of other ectotherms. Although this is the case generally, it is not always true, and exceptions in the study system may further clarify mechanisms. |
| Exploitation Route | As we work to continue to clarify mechanisms we will want to understand in what contexts we may expect smaller body sizes of single-cell producers and other ectotherms in aquatic environments. This is important because fisheries are based, ultimately, on this kind of production, eaten by zooplankton and then transported up through the food chain. The research is basic science, and is useful in that it helps us understand the reasons for one of the major biotic responses to climate change. |
| Sectors | Environment |
| URL | http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1365-2656.12064/full |
| Title | "cheddar" software package for the R programming language |
| Description | A package of software tools for manipulating certain kinds of food web data, now on the Comprehensive R Archive Network |
| Type Of Material | Improvements to research infrastructure |
| Year Produced | 2013 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| Impact | At least five papers in prep or in press so far have used the package for their analysis |
| URL | http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/cheddar/index.html |
| Title | The relationship between body mass and field metabolic rate among individual birds and mammals |
| Description | The online supplement to this paper contains the complete dataset used, which is the biggest ever dataset assembled on metabolic rates and body sizes of individual birds and mammals. |
| Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
| Year Produced | 2013 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| Impact | The data are available to be used in future research. |
| URL | http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1365-2656.12086/suppinfo |
| Title | diatom data |
| Description | Body sizes of diatoms in icelandic streams across a temperature gradient |
| Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
| Year Produced | 2013 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| Impact | The database is available to other researchers |
| URL | http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gcb.12285/suppinfo |
| Title | Cheddar ? analysis and visualization of ecological communities in R |
| Description | A software package submitted to the Comprehensive R Archive Network and described in a publication. Very useful for the work. |
| Type Of Technology | Software |
| Impact | Publication date is an estimate of completion or near completion, since the software has been available open source through a large part of its development. |