Warming of aquatic ecosystems disrupts aquatic-terrestrial linkages in the tropics

Aquatic ecosystems are tightly linked to terrestrial ecosystems by exchanges of resources, which influence species interactions, community dynamics and functioning in both ecosystem types. However, our understanding of how this coupling responds to climate warming is restricted to temperate, boreal, and arctic regions, with limited knowledge from tropical ecosystems.

We investigated how warming aquatic ecosystems impacts cross-ecosystem exchanges in the tropics, through the export of aquatic resources into the terrestrial environment and the breakdown of terrestrial resources within the aquatic environment. We experimentally heated 50 naturally assembled aquatic communities, contained within different sized tank-bromeliads, to a 23.5 - 32°C gradient of mean water temperatures.

The biomass, abundance, and richness of aquatic insects emerging into the terrestrial environment all declined with rising temperatures over a 45-day experiment. Structural equation and linear mixed-effects ..., Further methodological details on data collection can be found within the published paper and its supplementary material.
, This archive contains the dataset used for all modelling, analysis and plotting carried out in this paper. Please see the \"ReadMe\" sheet within the Excel file for further descriptive information on the contents of the dataset and the units of each column. Any missing data are indicated by “NA”. All additional methodological details are present in the main and supplementary components of the published paper.
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