Data from: 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 populations, we argue that accounting
for size-specific temperature effects is pivotal for understanding how
warming affects animal populations and communities.