Low-intensity urbanisation alters community composition across multiple trophic levels on Lipsi Island, Greece.

Urbanisation has reduced the abundance and diversity of many taxonomic groups, and the effects may be more pronounced on islands, which have a smaller regional species pool to compensate. Green spaces within urban environments may help to safeguard wildlife assemblages, and the associated habitat heterogeneity can even increase species diversity. Here, total abundance and species diversity of butterflies, birds, and vegetation at nine rural and nine urban locations were quantified on Lipsi Island, Greece.

Temperature alters the predator-prey size relationships and size-selectivity of Southern Ocean fish.

A primary response of many marine ectotherms to warming is a reduction in body size, to lower the metabolic costs associated with higher temperatures. The impact of such changes on ecosystem dynamics and stability will depend on the resulting changes to community size-structure, but few studies have investigated how temperature affects the relative size of predators and their prey in natural systems. We utilise >3700 prey size measurements from ten Southern Ocean lanternfish species sampled across >10° of latitude to investigate how temperature influences predator-prey size relationships and size-selective feeding.

Oil and gas platforms degrade benthic invertebrate diversity and food web structure.

Oil and gas exploitation introduces toxic contaminants such as hydrocarbons and heavy metals to the surrounding sediment, resulting in deleterious impacts on marine benthic communities. This study combines benthic monitoring data over a 30-year period in the North Sea with dietary information on >1400 taxa to quantify the effects of active oil and gas platforms on benthic food webs using a multiple before-after control-impact experiment. Contamination from oil and gas platforms caused declines in benthic food web complexity, community abundance, and biodiversity.

Flexible foraging behaviour increases predator vulnerability to climate change.

Higher temperatures are expected to reduce species coexistence by increasing energetic demands. However, flexible foraging behaviour could balance this effect by allowing predators to target specific prey species to maximize their energy intake, according to principles of optimal foraging theory. Here we test these assumptions using a large dataset comprising 2,487 stomach contents from six fish species with different feeding strategies, sampled across environments with varying prey availability over 12 years in Kiel Bay (Baltic Sea).

Quantitative description of six fish species' gut contents and prey abundances in the Baltic Sea (1968-1978).

The dataset presents a compilation of stomach contents from six demersal fish species from two functional groups inhabiting the Baltic Sea. It includes detailed information on prey identities, body masses, and biomasses recovered from both the fish's digestive systems and their surrounding environment. Environmental parameters, such as salinity and temperature levels, have been integrated to enrich this dataset.

Chronic exposure to environmental temperature attenuates the thermal sensitivity of salmonids.

Metabolism, the biological processing of energy and materials, scales predictably with temperature and body size. Temperature effects on metabolism are normally studied via acute exposures, which overlooks the capacity for organisms to moderate their metabolism following chronic exposure to warming. Here, we conduct respirometry assays in situ and after transplanting salmonid fish among different streams to disentangle the effects of chronic and acute thermal exposure.

Warming indirectly simplifies food webs through effects on apex predators.

Warming alters ecosystems through direct physiological effects on organisms and indirect effects via biotic interactions, but their relative impacts in the wild are unknown due to the difficulty in warming natural environments. Here we bridge this gap by embedding manipulative field experiments within a natural stream temperature gradient to test whether warming and apex fish predators have interactive effects on freshwater ecosystems. Fish exerted cascading effects on algal production and microbial decomposition via both green and brown pathways in the food web, but only under warming.

Machine learning ecological networks.

Deep-learning tools can help to construct historical, modern-day, and future food webs.

Metabolic plasticity can amplify ecosystem responses to global warming.

Organisms have the capacity to alter their physiological response to warming through acclimation or adaptation, but the consequence of this metabolic plasticity for energy flow through food webs is currently unknown, and a generalisable framework does not exist for modelling its ecosystem-level effects. Here, using temperature-controlled experiments on stream invertebrates from a natural thermal gradient, we show that the ability of organisms to raise their metabolic rate following chronic exposure to warming decreases with increasing body size. Chronic exposure to higher temperatures also increases the acute thermal sensitivity of whole-organismal metabolic rate, independent of body size.

Soil organic matter, rather than temperature, determines the structure and functioning of subarctic decomposer communities.

The impacts of climate change on ecosystem structure and functioning are likely to be strongest at high latitudes due to the adaptation of biota to relatively low temperatures and nutrient levels. Soil warming is widely predicted to alter microbial, invertebrate, and plant communities, with cascading effects on ecosystem functioning, but this has largely been demonstrated over short-term (<10 year) warming studies. Using a natural soil temperature gradient spanning 10-35°C, we examine responses of soil organisms, decomposition, nitrogen cycling, and plant biomass production to long-term warming.

Thermal acclimation increases the stability of a predator-prey interaction in warmer environments.

Global warming over the next century is likely to alter the energy demands of consumers and thus the strengths of their interactions with their resources. The subsequent cascading effects on population biomasses could have profound effects on food web stability. One key mechanism by which organisms can cope with a changing environment is phenotypic plasticity, such as acclimation to warmer conditions through reversible changes in their physiology.

The ecological impacts of multiple environmental stressors on coastal biofilm bacteria.

Ecological communities are increasingly exposed to multiple interacting stressors. For example, warming directly affects the physiology of organisms, eutrophication stimulates the base of the food web, and harvesting larger organisms for human consumption dampens top-down control. These stressors often combine in the natural environment with unpredictable results.

Temperature effects on the temporal dynamics of a subarctic invertebrate community.

Climate warming is predicted to have major impacts on the structure of terrestrial communities, particularly in high latitude ecosystems where growing seasons are short. Higher temperatures may dampen seasonal dynamics in community composition as a consequence of earlier snowmelt, with potentially cascading effects across all levels of biological organisation. Here, we examined changes in community assembly and structure along a natural soil temperature gradient in the Hengill geothermal valley, Iceland, during the summer of 2015.

Multitrophic diversity sustains ecological complexity by dampening top-down control of a shallow marine benthic food web.

Biodiversity is typically considered as a one-dimensional metric (e.g., species richness), yet the consequences of species loss may be different depending on where extinctions occur in the food web.

Extreme rainfall events alter the trophic structure in bromeliad tanks across the Neotropics.

Changes in global and regional precipitation regimes are among the most pervasive components of climate change. Intensification of rainfall cycles, ranging from frequent downpours to severe droughts, could cause widespread, but largely unknown, alterations to trophic structure and ecosystem function. We conducted multi-site coordinated experiments to show how variation in the quantity and evenness of rainfall modulates trophic structure in 210 natural freshwater microcosms (tank bromeliads) across Central and South America (18°N to 29°S).

Interactive effects of warming and microplastics on metabolism but not feeding rates of a key freshwater detritivore.

Microplastics are an emerging pollutant of high concern, with their prevalence in the environment linked to adverse impacts on aquatic organisms. However, our knowledge of these impacts on freshwater species is rudimentary, and there is almost no research directly testing how these effects can change under ongoing and future climate warming. Given the potential for multiple stressors to interact in nature, research on the combined impacts of microplastics and environmental temperature requires urgent attention.

Consistent temperature dependence of functional response parameters and their use in predicting population abundance.

Global warming is one of the greatest threats to the persistence of populations: increased metabolic demands should strengthen pairwise species interactions, which could destabilize food webs at the higher organizational levels. Quantifying the temperature dependence of consumer-resource interactions is thus essential for predicting ecological responses to warming. We explored feeding interactions between different predator-prey pairs in controlled-temperature chambers and in a system of naturally heated streams.

Long-term exposure to higher temperature increases the thermal sensitivity of grazer metabolism and movement.

Ecological studies of global warming impacts have many constraints. Organisms are often exposed to higher temperatures for short periods of time, probably underestimating their ability to acclimate or adapt relative to slower but real rates of warming. Many studies also focus on a limited number of traits and miss the multifaceted effects that warming may have on organisms, from physiology to behaviour.

Persistence of environmental DNA in marine systems.

As environmental DNA (eDNA) becomes an increasingly valuable resource for marine ecosystem monitoring, understanding variation in its persistence across contrasting environments is critical. Here, we quantify the breakdown of macrobial eDNA over a spatio-temporal axis of locally extreme conditions, varying from ocean-influenced offshore to urban-inshore, and between winter and summer. We report that eDNA degrades 1.

Changes in feeding selectivity of freshwater invertebrates across a natural thermal gradient.

Environmental warming places physiological constraints on organisms, which may be mitigated by their feeding behavior. Theory predicts that consumers should increase their feeding selectivity for more energetically valuable resources in warmer environments to offset the disproportionate increase in metabolic demand relative to ingestion rate. This may also result in a change in feeding strategy or a shift towards a more specialist diet.

Soil temperature effects on the structure and diversity of plant and invertebrate communities in a natural warming experiment.

Global warming is predicted to significantly alter species physiology, biotic interactions and thus ecosystem functioning, as a consequence of coexisting species exhibiting a wide range of thermal sensitivities. There is, however, a dearth of research examining warming impacts on natural communities. Here, we used a natural warming experiment in Iceland to investigate the changes in above-ground terrestrial plant and invertebrate communities along a soil temperature gradient (10°C-30°C).