Animal temperature limits and ecological relevance: effects of size, activity and rates of change

Abstract

Summary 1.Climate change is affecting species distributions and will increasingly do so. However, current understanding of which individuals and species are most likely to survive and why is poor. Knowledge of assemblage or community level effects is limited and the balance of mechanisms that are important over different time-scales is poorly described. Laboratory experiments on marine animals predominantly employ rates of change 10-100 000 times faster than climate induced oceanic warming. To address this failure we investigated differences in individual and species abilities to tolerate warming, and also how rate of warming affected survival. 2. This study identifies community level effects of thermal biology by applying a multi-species, multi-trophic level approach to the analysis of temperature limits. 3. Within species analyses of 14 species from 6 phyla showed smaller individuals survived to higher temperatures than large animals when temperatures were raised acutely. If this trend continues at slower warming rates, the early loss of larger individuals has marked consequences at the population level as larger individuals form the major reproductive component. 4. Between species comparisons showed active species survived to higher temperatures than sessile or low activity groups. Thus active groups (e.g. predators) and juvenile or immature individuals should fare better in rapid warming scenarios. This would be expected to produce short-term ecological imbalances in warming events. 5. The rate of warming markedly affected temperature limits in a wide range of Antarctic marine species. Different species survived to temperatures of 8·3-17·6 ° C when temperatures were raised by around 1 ° C day − 1 . However they only survived to temperatures between 4·0 ° C and 12·3 ° C when temperatures were raised by around 1-2 ° C week − 1 , and temperatures of only 1·0-6·0 ° C were tolerated for acclimations over periods of months. 6. Current models predicting range changes of species in response to climate change are either correlative or mechanistic. Mechanistic models offer the potential to incorporate the ecophysiological adaptation and evolutionary processes which determine future responses and go beyond simple correlative approaches. These models depend on the incorporation of data on species capacities to resist and adapt to change. This study is an important step in the provision of such data from experimental manipulations.

First insights into the deep-sea tanaidacean fauna of the Ross Sea: species richness and composition across the shelf break, slope and abyss

“…Results of the studies on the other Southern Ocean invertebrates demonstrated their low tolerance to warming especially when concerning low activity taxa (Peck et al 2009). This fact is quite important in the context of the latest discussion about the possibility of describing new taxa before they go extinct, especially in case of poorly studied groups such as, e.g., tanaidaceans (Mora et al 2011;Costello et al 2013).…”

Effects of acute and chronic temperature changes on the functional responses of the dogfish Scyliorhinus canicula (Linnaeus, 1758) towards amphipod prey Echinogammarus marinus (Leach, 1815)

“…Prediction of the ecological ramifications of facets of climate change is particularly difficult due to inherent confounds of interactions between dissolved oxygen concentration and temperature (Peck et al 2009 (Broitman et al 2009). However, here we have shown that by using comparative functional response analyses, in a similar way to invasive species impact predictions Wasserman et al 2016b), it is possible to identify the impact of a predator under various warming scenarios and assess whether there are interaction effects when both sides of the predator-prey dynamic are considered.…”

Metabolic cold adaptation and aerobic performance of blue mussels (Mytilus edulis) along a temperature gradient into the High Arctic region

“…Animals were kept in 40 L aquariums of similar salinity (27 PSU) as the collection site. Aquarium water temperatures were lowered to holding temperature (1 °C) at a rate of 1 °C day −1 , using 0.5 °C steps in the morning and afternoon (Peck et al 2009a). Mussels were allowed to acclimate to laboratory conditions for 4 weeks prior to respiration measurements, and water temperature was maintained at 1 ± 0.20 °C throughout the experimental period.…”