Will Invertebrates Require Increasingly Carbon-Rich Food in a Warming World?

Diet effects on ectotherm thermal performance

The environment is changing rapidly, and considerable research is aimed at understanding the capacity of organisms to respond. Changes in environmental temperature are particularly concerning as most animals are ectothermic, with temperature considered a key factor governing their ecology, biogeography, behaviour and physiology. The ability of ectotherms to persist in an increasingly warm, variable, and unpredictable future will depend on their nutritional status. Nutritional resources (e.g. food availability, quality, options) vary across space and time and in response to environmental change, but animals also have the capacity to alter how much they eat and what they eat, which may help them improve their performance under climate change. In this review, we discuss the state of knowledge in the intersection between animal nutrition and temperature. We take a mechanistic approach to describe nutrients (i.e. broad macronutrients, specific lipids, and micronutrients) that may impact thermal performance and discuss what is currently known about their role in ectotherm thermal plasticity, thermoregulatory behaviour, diet preference, and thermal tolerance. We finish by describing how this topic can inform ectotherm biogeography, behaviour, and aquaculture research.

Global change alters coastal plankton food webs by promoting the microbial loop: An inverse modelling and network analysis approach on a mesocosm experiment

Marine organisms are currently, and will continue to be, exposed to the simultaneous effects of multiple environmental changes. Plankton organisms form the base of pelagic marine food webs and are particularly sensitive to ecosystem changes. Thus, warming, acidification, and changes in dissolved nutrient concentrations have the potential to alter these assemblages, with consequences for the entire ecosystem. Despite the growing number of studies addressing the potential influence of multiple drivers on plankton, global change may also cause less obvious alterations to the networks of interactions among species. Using inverse analyses applied to data collected during a mesocosm experiment, we aimed to compare the ecological functioning of coastal plankton assemblages and the interactions within their food web under different global change scenarios. The experimental treatments were based on the RCP 6.0 and 8.5 scenarios developed by the IPCC, which were extended (ERCP) to integrate the future predicted changes in coastal water nutrient concentrations. Overall, we identified that the functioning of the plankton food web was rather similar in the Ambient and ERCP 6.0 scenarios, but substantially altered in the ERCP 8.5 scenario. Using food web modelling and ecological network analysis, we identified that global change strengthens the microbial loop, with a decrease of energy transfer efficiency to higher trophic levels. Microzooplankton responded as well by an increased degree of herbivory in their diet and represented, compared to mesozooplankton, by far the main top-down pressure on primary producers. We also observed that the organisation of the food web and its capacity to recycle carbon was higher under the ERCP 8.5 scenario, but flow diversity and carbon path length were significantly reduced, illustrating an increased food web stability at the expense of diversity. Here, we provide evidence that if global change goes beyond the ERCP 6.0 scenario, coastal ecosystem functioning will be subjected to dramatic changes.

Effects of water temperature on freshwater macroinvertebrates: a systematic review

Water temperature is one of the main abiotic factors affecting the structure and functioning of aquatic ecosystems and its alteration can have important effects on biological communities. Macroinvertebrates are excellent bio-indicators and have been used for decades to assess the status of aquatic ecosystems as a result of environmental stresses; however, their responses to temperature are poorly documented and have not been systematically evaluated. The aims of this review are: (i) to collate and summarize responses of freshwater macroinvertebrates to different temperature conditions, comparing the results of experimental and theoretical studies; (ii) to understand how the focus of research on the effects of temperature on macroinvertebrates has changed during the last 51 years; and (iii) to identify research gaps regarding temperature responses, ecosystem types, organism groups, spatiotemporal scales, and geographical regions to suggest possible research directions. We performed a comparative assessment of 223 publications that specifically consider freshwater macroinvertebrates and address the effects of temperature. Short-term studies performed in the laboratory and focusing on insects exposed to a range of temperatures dominated. Field studies were carried out mainly in Europe, at catchment scale and almost exclusively in rivers; they mainly investigated responses to water thermal regime at the community scale. The most frequent biological responses tested were growth rate, fecundity and the time and length of emergence, whereas ecological responses mainly involved composition, richness, and distribution. Thermal research on freshwater macroinvertebrates has undergone a shift since the 2000s when studies involving extended spatiotemporal scales and investigating the effects of global warming first appeared. In addition, recent studies have considered the effects of temperature at genetic and evolutionary scales. Our review revealed that the effects of temperature on macroinvertebrates are manifold with implications at different levels, from genes to communities. However, community-level physiological, phenological and fitness responses tested on individuals or populations should be studied in more detail given their macroecological effects are likely to be enhanced by climate warming. In addition, most field studies at regional scales have used air temperature as a proxy for water temperature; obtaining accurate water temperature data in future studies will be important to allow proper consideration of the spatial thermal heterogeneity of water bodies and any effects on macroinvertebrate distribution patterns. Finally, we found an uneven number of studies across different ecosystems and geographic areas, with lentic bodies and regions outside the West underrepresented. It will also be crucial to include macroinvertebrates of high-altitude and tropical areas in future work because these groups are most vulnerable to climate warming for multiple reasons. Further studies on temperature-macroinvertebrate relationships are needed to fill the current gaps and facilitate appropriate conservation strategies for freshwater ecosystems in an anthropogenic-driven era.

A 34-year survey under phosphorus decline and warming: Consequences on stoichiometry and functional trait composition of freshwater macroinvertebrate communities

Worldwide, freshwater systems are subjected to increasing temperatures and nutrient changes. Under phosphorus and nitrogen enrichment consumer communities are often thought to shift towards fast-growing and P-rich taxa, supporting the well-known link between growth rate and body stoichiometry. While these traits are also favoured under warming, the temperature effect on stoichiometry is less clear. As recently shown, there is a general link between functional traits and body stoichiometry, which makes the integration of stoichiometric traits a promising tool to help understanding the mechanisms behind taxonomic and functional community responses to nutrient changes and/or warming. Yet, such approaches have been scarcely developed at community level and on a long-term perspective. In this study, we investigated long-term responses in stoichiometry and functional trait composition of macroinvertebrate communities to nutrient changes (decreasing water P; increasing water N:P) and warming over a 34-year period in the Middle Loire River (France), testing the potentially opposing responses to these drivers. Both drivers should cause shifts in species composition, which will alter the overall community stoichiometry and functional composition following assumptions from ecological stoichiometry theory. We found that the macroinvertebrate community shifted towards P-poor taxa, causing significant trends in overall community stoichiometry which indicates long-term changes in the nutrient pool provided by these consumers (i.e. decrease in %N and %P, increase in N:P). Further, while the former high-P conditions favoured traits associated to detritus feeding and fast development (i.e. small maximum body size, short life duration), recent conditions favoured predators and slow-developing taxa. These results suggest nutrients to be a more important driver than temperature over this period. By providing a pivotal link between environmental changes and functional trait composition of communities, approaches based on stoichiometric traits offer sound perspectives to investigate ecological relationships between multiple drivers operating at various scales and ecosystem functioning.

A common temperature dependence of nutritional demands in ectotherms

In light of ongoing climate change, it is increasingly important to know how nutritional requirements of ectotherms are affected by changing temperatures. Here, we analyse the wide thermal response of phosphorus (P) requirements via elemental gross growth efficiencies of Carbon (C) and P, and the Threshold Elemental Ratios in different aquatic invertebrate ectotherms: the freshwater model species Daphnia magna, the marine copepod Acartia tonsa, the marine heterotrophic dinoflagellate Oxyrrhis marina, and larvae of two populations of the marine crab Carcinus maenas. We show that they all share a non-linear cubic thermal response of nutrient requirements. Phosphorus requirements decrease from low to intermediate temperatures, increase at higher temperatures and decrease again when temperature is excessive. This common thermal response of nutrient requirements is of great importance if we aim to understand or even predict how ectotherm communities will react to global warming and nutrient-driven eutrophication.

Stoichiometric mismatch causes a warming‐induced regime shift in experimental plankton communities

In many ecosystems, consumers respond to warming differently than their resources, sometimes leading to temporal mismatches between seasonal maxima in consumer demand and resource availability. A potentially equally pervasive, but less acknowledged threat to the temporal coherence of consumer‐resource interactions is mismatch in food quality. Many plant and algal communities respond to warming with shifts toward more carbon‐rich species and growth forms, thereby diluting essential elements in their biomass and intensifying the stoichiometric mismatch with herbivore nutrient requirements. Here we report on a mesocosm experiment on the spring succession of an assembled plankton community in which we manipulated temperature (ambient vs. +3.6°C) and presence versus absence of two types of grazers (ciliates and Daphnia), and where warming caused a dramatic regime shift that coincided with extreme stoichiometric mismatch. At ambient temperatures, a typical spring succession developed, where a moderate bloom of nutritionally adequate phytoplankton was grazed down to a clear‐water phase by a developing Daphnia population. While warming accelerated initial Daphnia population growth, it speeded up algal growth rates even more, triggering a massive phytoplankton bloom of poor food quality. Consistent with the predictions of a stoichiometric producer–grazer model, accelerated phytoplankton growth promoted the emergence of an alternative system attractor, where the extremely low phosphorus content of the abundant algal food eventually drove Daphnia to extinction. Where present, ciliates slowed down the phytoplankton bloom and the deterioration of its nutritional value, but this only delayed the regime shift. Eventually, phytoplankton also grew out of grazer control in the presence of ciliates, and the Daphnia population crashed. To our knowledge, the experiment is the first empirical demonstration of the “paradox of energy enrichment” (grazer starvation in an abundance of energy‐rich but nutritionally imbalanced food) in a multispecies phytoplankton community. More generally, our results support the notion that warming can exacerbate the stoichiometric mismatch at the plant–herbivore interface and limit energy transfer to higher trophic levels.

An integrated multiple driver mesocosm experiment reveals the effect of global change on planktonic food web structure

Global change puts coastal marine systems under pressure, affecting community structure and functioning. Here, we conducted a mesocosm experiment with an integrated multiple driver design to assess the impact of future global change scenarios on plankton, a key component of marine food webs. The experimental treatments were based on the RCP 6.0 and 8.5 scenarios developed by the IPCC, which were Extended (ERCP) to integrate the future predicted changing nutrient inputs into coastal waters. We show that simultaneous influence of warming, acidification, and increased N:P ratios alter plankton dynamics, favours smaller phytoplankton species, benefits microzooplankton, and impairs mesozooplankton. We observed that future environmental conditions may lead to the rise of Emiliania huxleyi and demise of Noctiluca scintillans, key species for coastal planktonic food webs. In this study, we identified a tipping point between ERCP 6.0 and ERCP 8.5 scenarios, beyond which alterations of food web structure and dynamics are substantial.

Climate model-informed experiments indicate that marine plankton food webs may be restructured in the future. There exists a tipping point where a crucial plankton community structure changes under increased nitrogen to phosphorous ratios, pCO₂ and temperature.

Consumer trait responses track change in resource supply along replicated thermal gradients

Rising temperatures may alter consumer diets through increased metabolic demand and altered resource availability. However, current theories assessing dietary shifts with warming do not account for a change in resource availability. It is unknown whether consumers will increase consumption rates or consume different resources to meet increased energy requirements and whether the dietary change will lead to associated variation in morphology and nutrient utilization. Here, we used populations of Gambusia affinis across parallel thermal gradients in New Zealand (NZ) and California (CA) to understand the influence of temperature on diets, morphology and stoichiometric phenotypes. Our results show that with increasing temperature in NZ, mosquitofish consumed more plant material, whereas in CA mosquitofish shifted towards increased consumption of invertebrate prey. In both regions, populations with plant-based diets had fuller guts, longer relative gut lengths, better-orientated mouths and reduced body elemental %C and N/P. Together, our results show multiple pathways by which consumers may alter their feeding patterns with rising temperatures, and they suggest that warming-induced changes to resource availability may be the principal determinant of which pathway is taken.

Local flexibility in feeding behaviour and contrasting microhabitat use of an omnivore across latitudes

As the environment is getting warmer and species are redistributed, consumers can be forced to adjust their interactions with available prey, and this could have cascading effects within food webs. To better understand the capacity for foraging flexibility, our study aimed to determine the diet variability of an ectotherm omnivore inhabiting kelp forests, the sea urchin Echinus esculentus, along its entire latitudinal distribution in the northeast Atlantic. Using a combination of gut content and stable isotope analyses, we determined the diet and trophic position of sea urchins at sites in Portugal (42° N), France (49° N), southern Norway (63° N), and northern Norway (70° N), and related these results to the local abundance and distribution of putative food items. With mean estimated trophic levels ranging from 2.4 to 4.6, omnivory and diet varied substantially within and between sites but not across latitudes. Diet composition generally reflected prey availability within epiphyte or understorey assemblages, with local affinities demonstrating that the sea urchin adjusts its foraging to match the small-scale distribution of food items. A net "preference" for epiphytic food sources was found in northern Norway, where understorey food was limited compared to other regions. We conclude that diet change may occur in response to food source redistribution at multiple spatial scales (microhabitats, sites, regions). Across these scales, the way that key consumers alter their foraging in response to food availability can have important implication for food web dynamics and ecosystem functions along current and future environmental gradients.

Temperature dependency of predation: Increased killing rates and prey mass consumption by predators with warming

Temperature dependency of consumer-resource interactions is fundamentally important for understanding and predicting the responses of food webs to climate change. Previous studies have shown temperature-driven shifts in herbivore consumption rates and resource preference, but these effects remain poorly understood for predatory arthropods. Here, we investigate how predator killing rates, prey mass consumption, and macronutrient intake respond to increased temperatures using a laboratory and a field reciprocal transplant experiment. Ectothermic predators, wolf spiders (Pardosa sp.), in the lab experiment, were exposed to increased temperatures and different prey macronutrient content (high lipid/low protein and low lipid/high protein) to assess changes in their killing rates and nutritional demands. Additionally, we investigate prey mass and lipid consumption by spiders under contrasting temperatures, along an elevation gradient. We used a field reciprocal transplant experiment between low (420 masl; 26°C) and high (2,100 masl; 15°C) elevations in the Ecuadorian Andes, using wild populations of two common orb-weaver spider species (Leucauge sp. and Cyclosa sp.) present along the elevation gradient. We found that killing rates of wolf spiders increased with warmer temperatures but were not significantly affected by prey macronutrient content, although spiders consumed significantly more lipids from lipid-rich prey. The field reciprocal transplant experiment showed no consistent predator responses to changes in temperature along the elevational gradient. Transplanting Cyclosa sp. spiders to low- or high-elevation sites did not affect their prey mass or lipid consumption rate, whereas Leucauge sp. individuals increased prey mass consumption when transplanted from the high to the low warm elevation. Our findings show that increases in temperature intensify predator killing rates, prey consumption, and lipid intake, but the responses to temperature vary between species, which may be a result of species-specific differences in their hunting behavior and sensitivity to temperature.

The effects of food stoichiometry and temperature on copepods are mediated by ontogeny

Climate change is warming the oceans, increasing carbon dioxide partial pressure and reducing nutrient recycling from deep layers. This will affect carbon (C) and phosphorus (P) availability in the oceans, thus, altering the balance between the nutrient content of consumers and their food resource. The combined effects of food quality and temperature have been investigated for adult copepods; however, nauplii, the early developmental stages of copepods, often far outnumber adults, grow more rapidly and have a higher phosphorus body content and demand than later life stages. Consequently, ontogeny may affect how copepods respond to the combined stressors of increasing temperature and altered food stoichiometry. We conducted temperature-controlled experiments (24, 28 and 32 °C) where Parvocalanus crassirostris was fed either a P-replete or a P-limited phytoplankton food source. Reduced survival of nauplii and copepodites at the highest temperature was ameliorated when fed P-replete food. At higher temperatures, copepodite growth remained stable, but internal C:P stoichiometry diverged in the direction of phytoplankton C:P, suggesting that increased temperature affected copepodite stoichiometric homeostasis. In contrast, naupliar P content increased with temperature and naupliar growth was P limited, suggesting nauplii required additional phosphorus at higher temperatures. We conclude that resource stoichiometry plays a key role in how copepod survival and growth are impacted by temperature, and that ontogeny mediates these responses. Our results suggest that as the extent of warming oceans and phytoplankton nutrient limitation increase, copepod survival and the growth of early life stages may decline.