Dataset Information

Temperature directly and indirectly influences food web structure.

ABSTRACT: Understanding whether and how environmental conditions may impact food web structure at a global scale is central to our ability to predict how food webs will respond to climate change. However, such an understanding is nascent. Using the best resolved available food webs to date, I address whether latitude, temperature, or both, explain the number of species and feeding interactions, the proportion of basal and top species, as well as the degree of omnivory, connectance and the number of trophic levels across food webs. I found that temperature is a more parsimonious predictor of food web structure than latitude. Temperature directly reduces the number of species, the proportion of basal species and the number of interactions while it indirectly increases omnivory levels, connectance and trophic level through its direct effects on the fraction and number of basal species. While direct impacts of temperature are routinely taken into account to predict how ecosystems may respond to global climate change, indirect effects have been largely overlooked. These results thus suggest that food webs may be affected by a combination of biotic and abiotic conditions, both directly and indirectly, in a changing world.

SUBMITTER: Gibert JP

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6441002 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Temperature directly and indirectly influences food web structure.

Gibert Jean P JP

Scientific reports 20190329 1

Understanding whether and how environmental conditions may impact food web structure at a global scale is central to our ability to predict how food webs will respond to climate change. However, such an understanding is nascent. Using the best resolved available food webs to date, I address whether latitude, temperature, or both, explain the number of species and feeding interactions, the proportion of basal and top species, as well as the degree of omnivory, connectance and the number of trophi ...[more]

PMID: 30926855

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Project description:BackgroundUnderstanding the mechanisms that control species genetic structure has always been a major objective in evolutionary studies. The association between genetic structure and species attributes has received special attention. As species attributes are highly taxonomically constrained, phylogenetically controlled methods are necessary to infer causal relationships. In plants, a previous study controlling for phylogenetic signal has demonstrated that Wright's FST, a measure of genetic differentiation among populations, is best predicted by the mating system (outcrossing, mixed-mating or selfing) and that plant traits such as perenniality and growth form have only an indirect influence on FST via their association with the mating system. The objective of this study is to further outline the determinants of plant genetic structure by distinguishing the effects of mating system on gene flow and on genetic drift. The association of biparental inbreeding and inbreeding depression with population genetic structure, mating system and plant traits are also investigated.ResultsBased on data from 263 plant species for which estimates of FST, inbreeding (FIS) and outcrossing rate (tm) are available, we confirm that mating system is the main influencing factor of FST. Moreover, using an alternative measure of FST unaffected by the impact of inbreeding on effective population size, we show that the influence of tm on FST is due to its impact on gene flow (reduced pollen flow under selfing) and on genetic drift (higher drift under selfing due to inbreeding). Plant traits, in particular perenniality, influence FST mostly via their effect on the mating system but also via their association with the magnitude of selection against inbred individuals: the mean inbreeding depression increases from short-lived herbaceous to long-lived herbaceous and then to woody species. The influence of perenniality on mating system does not seem to be related to differences in stature, as proposed earlier, but rather to differences in generation time.ConclusionPlant traits correlated with generation time affect both inbreeding depression and mating system. These in turn modify genetic drift and gene flow and ultimately genetic structure.

Dataset Information

Temperature directly and indirectly influences food web structure.

Publications

Temperature directly and indirectly influences food web structure.

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