Schuster Lukas, White Craig R, Marshall Dustin J
Centre for Geometric Biology School of Biological Sciences Monash University Melbourne Vic. Australia.
Ecol Evol. 2021 Dec 10;11(24):17952-17962. doi: 10.1002/ece3.8388. eCollection 2021 Dec.
Competition and metabolism should be linked. Intraspecific variation in metabolic rates and, hence, resource demands covary with competitive ability. The effects of metabolism on conspecific interactions, however, have mostly been studied under laboratory conditions. We used a trait-specific response-surface design to test for the effects of metabolism on pairwise interactions of the marine colonial invertebrate, in the field. Specifically, we compared the performance (survival, growth, and reproduction) of focal individuals, both in the presence and absence of a neighbor colony, both of which had their metabolic phenotype characterized. Survival of focal colonies depended on the metabolic phenotype of the neighboring individual, and on the combination of both the focal and neighbor colony metabolic phenotypes that were present. Surprisingly, we found pervasive effects of neighbor metabolic phenotypes on focal colony growth and reproduction, although the sign and strength of these effects showed strong microenvironmental variability. Overall, we find that the metabolic phenotype changes the strength of competitive interactions, but these effects are highly contingent on local conditions. We suggest future studies explore how variation in metabolic rate affects organisms beyond the focal organism alone, particularly under field conditions.
竞争与新陈代谢应该相互关联。代谢率的种内变异，以及因此产生的资源需求，与竞争能力共同变化。然而，新陈代谢对种内相互作用的影响大多是在实验室条件下进行研究的。我们采用了一种特定性状的响应面设计，以测试新陈代谢对海洋群居无脊椎动物在野外成对相互作用的影响。具体来说，我们比较了焦点个体在有和没有相邻群体存在的情况下的表现（生存、生长和繁殖），这两种情况下相邻群体的代谢表型都已被表征。焦点群体的生存取决于相邻个体的代谢表型，以及所存在的焦点群体和相邻群体代谢表型的组合。令人惊讶的是，我们发现相邻代谢表型对焦点群体的生长和繁殖有普遍影响，尽管这些影响的正负和强度表现出很强的微环境变异性。总体而言，我们发现代谢表型会改变竞争相互作用的强度，但这些影响高度取决于当地条件。我们建议未来的研究探索代谢率的变化如何不仅影响焦点生物体本身，还影响其他生物体，特别是在野外条件下。
