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.当前学界对动物种群响应气温上升的认知，建立在如下假设之上：支配基础生态过程的代谢率（metabolism）等生物学速率，仅随体型与温度独立缩放——尽管已有实证证据表明二者存在交互效应。本研究借助阶段结构消费者-资源模型（stage-structured consumer-resource model），探究了生命速率（vital rates）的温度-体型交互缩放对气候变暖下种群动态的影响。研究结果显示，交互缩放会改变种群及其阶段特异性的温度响应模式，使得气候变暖可引发种群调节（population regulation）与阶段结构的转变、影响群落结构（community structure），并主导种群对死亡率的响应。通过分析20种鱼类的实验数据，我们发现代谢率的种内缩放过程中普遍存在体型-温度交互效应。鉴于体型-温度交互效应已有实证支撑，且动物种群中体型结构普遍存在，我们认为，纳入体型特异性温度效应，对于理解气候变暖如何影响动物种群与群落至关重要。