Warm and fragile: Temperature and vulnerability to extinction in pelagic food webs
Final Report Abstract
This project carried the title “Warm and fragile: Temperature and vulnerability to extinction in pelagic food webs”. Our results showed this to be appropriately chosen. All our findings point to destructive effects of warming on the ectotherm populations that comprise aquatic food webs. Even a relatively friendly temperature of 25°C significantly shortens species persistence times and tends to make recovery impossible unless temperature is reduced back down to a lower level. Extreme heat waves may more dramatically change communities, namely in such a way that recovery becomes impossible even when temperature has returned back to normal in the post-heatwave period. Our theoretical work suggests that closed ecosystem states can nonetheless be repaired by special measures that overcome the biotic resistance to restoration that ensues under warming. Our work will find application in the restoration of disturbed ecological communities on Earth and of bioregenerative life support systems that are used in space missions and other extreme environments.
Publications
- (2014) Heated Relations: Temperature-Mediated Shifts in Consumption across Trophic Levels PloS one 9. e95046
Seifert, L., de Castro, F., Marquart, A., Gaedke, U., Weithoff, G. & Vos, M.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0095046) - (2015) Extreme heat changes post-heat wave community reassembly Ecology and Evolution 5
Seifert, L., Weithoff, G. & Vos, M.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.1490) - (2015) Warming-induced changes in predation, extinction and invasion in an ectotherm food web Oecologia 178
Seifert, L., Weithoff, G., Gaedke, U. & Vos, M.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-014-3211-4)
