Natural enemies have inconsistent impacts on the coexistence of competing species

Terry, J. Christopher D.; Chen, J.; Lewis, Owen T.

doi:10.1101/2020.08.27.270389

Cited by 8 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 72 publications

(106 reference statements)

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“…We did not find an interactive effect of parasitism and competition treatments on host abundances and frequencies. This result is in line with results from another laboratory experiment performed on the same system [71] showing that parasitism did not significantly affect host competitive coefficients. Furthermore, the type of competition between hosts did not significantly affect total host abundance, suggesting that the amount of food included was only able to support a certain number of hosts that did not vary with the type of competition.…”

Section: Plos Onesupporting

confidence: 91%

Experimental warming influences species abundances in a Drosophila host community through direct effects on species performance rather than altered competition and parasitism

et al. 2021

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Global warming is expected to have direct effects on species through their sensitivity to temperature, and also via their biotic interactions, with cascading indirect effects on species, communities, and entire ecosystems. To predict the community-level consequences of global climate change we need to understand the relative roles of both the direct and indirect effects of warming. We used a laboratory experiment to investigate how warming affects a tropical community of three species of Drosophila hosts interacting with two species of parasitoids over a single generation. Our experimental design allowed us to distinguish between the direct effects of temperature on host species performance, and indirect effects through altered biotic interactions (competition among hosts and parasitism by parasitoid wasps). Although experimental warming significantly decreased parasitism for all host-parasitoid pairs, the effects of parasitism and competition on host abundances and host frequencies did not vary across temperatures. Instead, effects on host relative abundances were species-specific, with one host species dominating the community at warmer temperatures, irrespective of parasitism and competition treatments. Our results show that temperature shaped a Drosophila host community directly through differences in species’ thermal performance, and not via its influences on biotic interactions.

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Section: Plos Onesupporting

confidence: 91%

Experimental warming influences species abundances in a Drosophila host community through direct effects on species performance rather than altered competition and parasitism

et al. 2021

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“…The above findings shed light on potential trait-based stabilizing and equalizing mechanisms that may determine the outcomes of competition among ant species and assemblage structure. Rigorous tests for these coexistence mechanisms would require competition experiments measuring demographic parameters such as invasion growth rates (e.g., Kraft et al, 2015); yet such approaches are not readily transferrable to animals (see Terry et al, 2020). Nonetheless, we suggest that the potential for trait differences to reflect niche or competitive effects warrants explicit consideration of both in the structuring of empirical assemblages.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…; such approaches are not readily transferable to animals (see 26). Nonetheless, we suggest that the potential for trait differences to reflect niche or competitive effects warrants explicit consideration of both in the structuring of empirical assemblages.…”

Section: )mentioning

confidence: 92%

Opposing mechanisms of competition determine species invasions and functional diversity

Wong

Lee

Leong

et al. 2021

Preprint

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Insight into how species’ phenotypic differences shape coexistence is key to understanding the processes structuring, maintaining and threatening biodiversity. In line with modern coexistence theory, increasing studies on plants show that traits may not only confer niche differences fostering the coexistence of dissimilar species, but also competitive advantages promoting the exclusion of weaker competitors. These variable relationships between traits and the outcomes of interspecific competition, and particularly their effects on assemblage structure, are relatively unexplored for animals in natural settings. Here we show that the abundance of an invasive ant as well as the composition and structure of native ground-foraging ant assemblages in a tropical grassland are largely attributable to differences in the morphological, dietary, physiological and behavioural traits between invasive and native species. Crucially, we find that individual traits vary in association with niche differences and competitive advantages, which have opposing effects on competitive exclusion. Competition along these separate trait axes consequently generates contrasting patterns of overdispersion and clustering in the functional structure of invaded assemblages. Our results highlight that different traits across the phenotypic spectrum may distinctly influence stabilizing and equalizing mechanisms of coexistence, ultimately modulating the role and effect of competition in structuring biodiversity.

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“…The higher-level properties of environmental performance curves, such as their curvature, are considerably harder to estimate than first order properties such as thermal optima. Empirical estimates for key parameters can be confounded, with each other, with consequences for reliable estimation of species coexistence (Terry et al 2021). The implications of parameter uncertainty need to be explicitly acknowledged and better understood.…”

Section: Identifying Processes In the Real Worldmentioning

confidence: 99%

Synthesising the multiple impacts of climatic variability on community responses to climate change

Terry

Rossberg

2021

Preprint

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Recent developments in understanding and predicting species responses to climate change have emphasised the importance of both environmental variability and consideration of the wider biotic community. To date, the interaction between the two has received less attention. However, considerable bodies of theory and empirical results suggest that multi-species consequences of variability can have strong impacts on range limits and the speed of range shifts. Here we demonstrate how biotic interactions and temporal variability can act together to influence range shift dynamics and highlight the need to understand these interactions in order to predict how species will respond to global change. We emphasise the value and utility of partitioning approaches applied to parameterised models to determine the direction and relative importance and direct of these forces in empirical systems.AuthorshipJCDT wrote the manuscript and built the models. All authors contributed significantly to the editing and manuscript development.FundingThe work was supported by NERC grant NE/T003510/1Data Sharing and Data AccessibilityCode to generate all results is publicly available at https://github.com/jcdterry/ClimateVar_BioticInts and should the manuscript be accepted will be permanently archived. The paper contains no new datasets.

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Natural enemies have inconsistent impacts on the coexistence of competing species

Cited by 8 publications

References 72 publications

Experimental warming influences species abundances in a Drosophila host community through direct effects on species performance rather than altered competition and parasitism

Experimental warming influences species abundances in a Drosophila host community through direct effects on species performance rather than altered competition and parasitism

Opposing mechanisms of competition determine species invasions and functional diversity

Synthesising the multiple impacts of climatic variability on community responses to climate change

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