Potential Impacts of Climate Change on Insect Communities: A Transplant Experiment

Abstract

Climate change will have profound impacts on the distribution, abundance and ecology of all species. We used a multi-species transplant experiment to investigate the potential effects of a warmer climate on insect community composition and structure. Eight native Australian plant species were transplanted into sites approximately 2.5°C (mean annual temperature) warmer than their native range. Subsequent insect colonisation was monitored for 12 months. We compared the insect communities on transplanted host plants at the warmer sites with control plants transplanted within the species' native range. Comparisons of the insect communities were also made among transplanted plants at warmer sites and congeneric plant species native to the warmer transplant area. We found that the morphospecies composition of the colonising Coleoptera and Hemiptera communities differed markedly between transplants at the control compared to the warmer sites. Community structure, as described by the distribution of feeding guilds, was also found to be different between the controls and transplants when the entire Coleoptera and Hemiptera community, including non-herbivore feeding guilds, was considered. However, the structure of the herbivorous insect community showed a higher level of consistency between plants at control and warm sites. There were marked differences in community composition and feeding guild structure, for both herbivores and non-herbivores, between transplants and congenerics at the warm sites. These results suggest that as the climate warms, considerable turnover in the composition of insect communities may occur, but insect herbivore communities may retain elements of their present-day structure.

Ontogeny constrains phenology: opportunities for activity and reproduction interact to dictate potential phenologies in a changing climate

“…Biologists often infer impacts of climate change by substituting space for time in comparative analyses (McLean et al 2005;Nooten et al 2014;Heimonen et al 2015). In our analysis, however, substituting space for time would mislead us about the impacts of climate change.…”

Environmental stressor gradients hierarchically regulate macrozoobenthic community turnover in lotic systems of Northern Italy

“…Invertebrate communities are controlled both directly and indirectly by climate (Poff et al, 2010). Many macroinvertebrates, mainly insects, in their adulthood live outside the water and their survival and reproduction are strongly associated to climatic conditions, while any climate changes would lead to intense local community turnovers, communities relocation, or geographical expansion (Aluja et al, 2014;Nooten et al, 2014;Rasmann et al, 2014). Climate, in combination with other factors (e.g., geology) influences the type and production of terrestrial and aquatic vegetation, which in turn influence the sources and types of organic autochthonous and allochthonous materials in the river continuum and their rate of decomposition.…”

The success of assisted colonization and assisted gene flow depends on phenology

“…Migration to newly suitable locations may alleviate some of the pressures imposed by a changing climate, and indeed, numerous taxa have shifted their ranges to higher latitudes and elevations over the past few decades (Perry et al, 2005;Parmesan, 2006;Lenoir et al, 2008). However, thermal conditions define only part of a species' niche, and migrating species may still experience unfamiliar conditions in the receiving habitat, including novel community assemblages (Hellmann et al, 2012;Nooten et al, 2014) and photoperiodic regimes (Griffith & Watson, 2006). For some, survival will depend on adaptation to changing conditions at current localities, or on a combination of migration and evolution, as has been argued for the pole-ward migration of species following glaciation (Davis & Shaw, 2001).…”