O'Connor Mary I, Piehler Michael F, Leech Dina M, Anton Andrea, Bruno John F
Curriculum in Ecology, The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA.
PLoS Biol. 2009 Aug;7(8):e1000178. doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.1000178. Epub 2009 Aug 25.
Climate change disrupts ecological systems in many ways. Many documented responses depend on species' life histories, contributing to the view that climate change effects are important but difficult to characterize generally. However, systematic variation in metabolic effects of temperature across trophic levels suggests that warming may lead to predictable shifts in food web structure and productivity. We experimentally tested the effects of warming on food web structure and productivity under two resource supply scenarios. Consistent with predictions based on universal metabolic responses to temperature, we found that warming strengthened consumer control of primary production when resources were augmented. Warming shifted food web structure and reduced total biomass despite increases in primary productivity in a marine food web. In contrast, at lower resource levels, food web production was constrained at all temperatures. These results demonstrate that small temperature changes could dramatically shift food web dynamics and provide a general, species-independent mechanism for ecological response to environmental temperature change.
气候变化以多种方式扰乱生态系统。许多已记录的响应取决于物种的生活史，这使得人们认为气候变化的影响虽很重要，但总体上难以描述。然而，营养级之间温度代谢效应的系统变化表明，变暖可能导致食物网结构和生产力发生可预测的变化。我们在两种资源供应情景下，通过实验测试了变暖对食物网结构和生产力的影响。与基于对温度的普遍代谢响应所做的预测一致，我们发现当资源增加时，变暖增强了消费者对初级生产的控制。在一个海洋食物网中，尽管初级生产力有所增加，但变暖改变了食物网结构并减少了总生物量。相比之下，在较低资源水平下，食物网生产在所有温度下都受到限制。这些结果表明，微小的温度变化可能会极大地改变食物网动态，并为生态系统对环境温度变化的响应提供一种通用的、与物种无关的机制。
