Accounting for species interactions is necessary for predicting how arctic arthropod communities respond to climate change

Abrego, Nerea, Roslin, Tomas, Huotari, Tea, Ji, Yinqiu, Schmidt, Niels Martin, Wang, Jiaxin, Yu, Douglas W. and Ovaskainen, Otso (2021) Accounting for species interactions is necessary for predicting how arctic arthropod communities respond to climate change. Ecography, 44 (6). pp. 885-896. ISSN 0906-7590

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Abstract

Species interactions are known to structure ecological communities. Still, the influ- ence of climate change on biodiversity has primarily been evaluated by correlating individual species distributions with local climatic descriptors, then extrapolating into future climate scenarios. We ask whether predictions on arctic arthropod response to climate change can be improved by accounting for species interactions. For this, we use a 14-year-long, weekly time series from Greenland, resolved to the species level by mitogenome mapping. During the study period, temperature increased by 2°C and arthropod species richness halved. We show that with abiotic variables alone, we are essentially unable to predict species responses, but with species interactions included, the predictive power of the models improves considerably. Cascading trophic effects thereby emerge as important in structuring biodiversity response to climate change. Given the need to scale up from species-level to community-level projections of bio- diversity change, these results represent a major step forward for predictive ecology.

Item Type: Article
Uncontrolled Keywords: sdg 13 - climate action,3* ,/dk/atira/pure/sustainabledevelopmentgoals/climate_action
Faculty \ School: Faculty of Science > School of Biological Sciences
Related URLs:
Depositing User: LivePure Connector
Date Deposited: 25 Mar 2021 00:48
Last Modified: 23 Oct 2022 02:19
URI: https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/79557
DOI: 10.1111/ecog.05547

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