Temperature-dependent body size effects determine population responses to climate warming

Current understanding of animal population responses to rising temperatures is based on the assumption that biological rates such as metabolism, which governs fundamental ecological processes, scale independently with body size and temperature, despite empirical evidence for interactive effects. Here we investigate the consequences of interactive temperature- and size-scaling of vital rates for the dynamics of populations experiencing warming using a stage-structured consumer-resource model. We show that interactive scaling alters population and stage-specific responses to rising temperatures, such that warming can induce shifts in population regulation and stage-structure, influence community structure and govern population responses to mortality. Analyzing experimental data for 20 fish species, we found size-temperature interactions in intraspecific scaling of metabolic rate to be common. Given the evidence for size-temperature interactions and the ubiquity of size structure in animal...

当前学界关于动物种群响应气候变暖的认知，均建立在一项假设之上：即调控基础生态过程的代谢率（metabolic rate）等生物学速率，会随个体体型与温度呈独立缩放关系，尽管已有实证证据表明二者存在交互效应。本研究采用阶段结构型消费-资源模型（stage-structured consumer-resource model），探究了生命速率的温度-体型交互缩放效应对升温种群动态的影响。研究结果显示，交互缩放会改变种群及其各发育阶段对气候变暖的响应模式：升温可引发种群调控机制与阶段结构的转变，影响群落结构，并调控种群对死亡率的响应。通过分析20种鱼类的实验数据，本研究发现代谢率种内缩放过程中普遍存在体型-温度交互效应。鉴于体型-温度交互效应的相关证据，以及动物种群中体型结构的普遍性……