Data from: Temperature and consumer type dependencies of energy flows in natural communities

With the world continuously warming, a mechanistic understanding of how
temperature affects interaction strengths, which are fundamental to
food-web stability, is needed. As interaction strengths are determined by
the flows of energy from resources to consumers, we investigated effects
of temperature on animal energetics. We used newly compiled datasets on
respiration rates and assimilation efficiencies to assess how temperature
affects the energy use (respiration rates) and the efficiency of energy
gain (assimilation efficiency) for different consumer types. Furthermore,
we incorporated our findings in a simulation of temperature effects on
maintenance feeding rates (i.e. energy consumption necessary to sustain
life). Our analysis revealed a generally positive temperature dependence
of assimilation efficiencies across consumer types thus implying a net
energy gain with warming. The temperature scaling of respiration rates did
not differ between consumer types. Based on these parameters we calculated
maintenance feeding rates and compared them to empirically measured
(realized) feeding rates. This comparison revealed that detritivores and
herbivores have the potential to increase their biomasses under warming as
their maintenance feeding rates increase less strongly than their realized
feeding rates. For carnivores, however, we found a stronger increase of
their maintenance feeding rates compared to their realized feeding rates,
which should lead to decreased population sizes under warming. Overall,
our results increase the understanding of climate change effects on
ecosystems as they suggest profound energetic consequences for natural
communities.