Interaction webs in arctic ecosystems: Determinants of arctic change?

Schmidt, Niels Martin; Hardwick, Bess; Gilg, Olivier; Høye, Toke T.; Krogh, Paul Henning; Meltofte, Hans; Michelsen, Anders; Mosbacher, Jesper Bruun; Raundrup, Katrine; Reneerkens, Jeroen; Stewart, Lærke; Wirta, Helena; Roslin, Tomas

doi:10.1007/s13280-016-0862-x

Cited by 70 publications

(66 citation statements)

References 118 publications

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“…At the community level, this will result in completely different patterns of synchrony among community members, and with longer-term change, in shifts in the relative timing of taxon-specific events. How this is reflected in community-level structure, dynamics, and functioning is a salient question in Arctic ecology (Legagneux et al 2014;Schmidt et al 2017Schmidt et al , 2016b.…”

Section: Community Phenology In a Changing Arcticmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spatiotemporal snowmelt patterns within a high Arctic landscape, with implications for flora and fauna

Kankaanpää

Skov

Abrego

et al. 2018

Arctic, Antarctic, and Alpine Research

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Snow conditions are important drivers of the distribution and phenology of Arctic flora and fauna, but the extent and effects of local variation in snowmelt are still inadequately studied. We analyze snowmelt patterns within the Zackenberg valley in northeast Greenland. Drawing on landscapelevel snowmelt dates and meteorological data from a central climate station, we model snowmelt trends during 1998-2014. We then use time-lapse photographs to examine consistency in spatiotemporal snowmelt patterns during 2006-2014. Finally, we use monitoring data on arthropods and plants for 1998-2014 to investigate how snowmelt date affects the phenology of Arctic organisms. Despite large interannual variation in snowmelt timing, we find consistency in the relative order of snowmelt among sites within the landscape. With a slight overall advancement in snowmelt during the study period, early melting locations have advanced more than late-melting ones. Individual organism groups differ greatly in how their phenology shifts with snowmelt, with much variance attributable to variation in life history and diet. Overall, we note that local variation in snowmelt patterns may drive important ecological processes, and that more attention should be paid to variability within landscapes. Areas optimal for a given taxon vary between years, thereby creating spatial structure in a seemingly uniform landscape. ARTICLE HISTORY

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Section: Community Phenology In a Changing Arcticmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spatiotemporal snowmelt patterns within a high Arctic landscape, with implications for flora and fauna

Kankaanpää

Skov

Abrego

et al. 2018

Arctic, Antarctic, and Alpine Research

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“…Furthermore, trophic interactions have been identified as key drivers of diversity patterns at macroecological scales, with bottom-up relationships being particularly important (Sandom et al 2013). Trophic interactions underpin the functioning and stability of ecosystems (Estes et al 2011, Schmidt et al 2017) and herbivores in particular are crucial links in both community and ecosystem ecology, with the composition of herbivore assemblages having dramatic impacts on the functioning of ecosystems (Ripple et al 2015, Bakker et al 2016. This further highlights the importance of simultaneously assessing functional and phylogenetic diversity to understand community assembly within trophic groups, rather than taxonomic groups that fail to include all relevant interactions (Wilcox et al 2018).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Trophic interactions and abiotic factors drive functional and phylogenetic structure of vertebrate herbivore communities across the Arctic tundra biome

et al. 2019

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Communities are assembled from species that evolve or colonise a given geographic region, and persist in the face of abiotic conditions and interactions with other species. The evolutionary and colonisation histories of communities are characterised by phylogenetic diversity, while functional diversity is indicative of abiotic and biotic conditions. The relationship between functional and phylogenetic diversity infers whether species functional traits are divergent (differing between related species) or convergent (similar among distantly related species). Biotic interactions and abiotic conditions are known to influence macroecological patterns in species richness, but how functional and phylogenetic diversity of guilds vary with biotic factors, and the relative importance of biotic drivers in relation to geographic and abiotic drivers is unknown. In this study, we test whether geographic, abiotic or biotic factors drive biome‐scale spatial patterns of functional and phylogenetic diversity and functional convergence in vertebrate herbivores across the Arctic tundra biome. We found that functional and phylogenetic diversity both peaked in the western North American Arctic, and that spatial patterns in both were best predicted by trophic interactions, namely vegetation productivity and predator diversity, as well as climatic severity. Our results show that both bottom–up and top–down trophic interactions, as well as winter temperatures, drive the functional and phylogenetic structure of Arctic vertebrate herbivore assemblages. This has implications for changing Arctic ecosystems; under future warming and northward movement of predators potential increases in phylogenetic and functional diversity in vertebrate herbivores may occur. Our study thus demonstrates that trophic interactions can determine large‐scale functional and phylogenetic diversity just as strongly as abiotic conditions.

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“…The effects of climate change on ecosystems are often difficult to predict, because species are interlinked in complex interaction networks and changes in one species can have consequences for many others (Koltz, Classen, & Wright, ; Schmidt et al, ). Indirect effects of climate‐driven changes in species abundance or guild composition are often mediated by trophic interactions, and shifts in the relative abundance of species can lead to changes in interaction strength and food web dynamics (Martin, ; Mortensen, Schmidt, Høye, Damgaard, & Forchhammer, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Flexibility in a changing arctic food web: Can rough‐legged buzzards cope with changing small rodent communities?

Fufachev

Ehrich

Sokolova

et al. 2019

Global Change Biology

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Indirect effects of climate change are often mediated by trophic interactions and consequences for individual species depend on how they are tied into the local food web. Here we show how the response of demographic rates of an arctic bird of prey to fluctuations in small rodent abundance changed when small rodent community composition and dynamics changed, possibly under the effect of climate warming. We observed the breeding biology of rough‐legged buzzards (Buteo lagopus) at the Erkuta Tundra Monitoring Site in southern Yamal, low arctic Russia, for 19 years (1999–2017). At the same time, data on small rodent abundance were collected and information on buzzard diet was obtained from pellet dissection. The small rodent community experienced a shift from high‐amplitude cycles to dampened fluctuations paralleled with a change in species composition toward less lemmings and more voles. Buzzards clearly preferred lemmings as prey. Breeding density of buzzards was positively related to small rodent abundance, but the shift in small rodent community lead to lower numbers relative to small rodent abundance. At the same time, after the change in small rodent community, the average number of fledglings was higher relative to small rodent abundance than earlier. These results suggest that the buzzard population adapted to a certain degree to the changes in the major resource, although at the same time density declined. The documented flexibility in the short‐term response of demographic rates to changes in structure and dynamics of key food web components make it difficult to predict how complex food webs will be transformed in a warmer Arctic. The degree of plasticity of functional responses is indeed likely to vary between species and between regions, depending also on the local food web context.

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Interaction webs in arctic ecosystems: Determinants of arctic change?

Cited by 70 publications

References 118 publications

Spatiotemporal snowmelt patterns within a high Arctic landscape, with implications for flora and fauna

Spatiotemporal snowmelt patterns within a high Arctic landscape, with implications for flora and fauna

Trophic interactions and abiotic factors drive functional and phylogenetic structure of vertebrate herbivore communities across the Arctic tundra biome

Flexibility in a changing arctic food web: Can rough‐legged buzzards cope with changing small rodent communities?

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