Climate Change Disproportionately Increases Herbivore over Plant or Parasitoid Biomass
All living organisms are linked through trophic relationships with resources and consumers, the balance of which determines overall ecosystem stability and functioning. Ecological research has identified a multitude of mechanisms that contribute to this balance, but ecologists are now challenged wit...
| Main Authors: | , |
|---|---|
| Format: | Online |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Public Library of Science
2012
|
| Online Access: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3399892/ |
| id |
pubmed-3399892 |
|---|---|
| recordtype |
oai_dc |
| spelling |
pubmed-33998922012-07-19 Climate Change Disproportionately Increases Herbivore over Plant or Parasitoid Biomass de Sassi, Claudio Tylianakis, Jason M. Research Article All living organisms are linked through trophic relationships with resources and consumers, the balance of which determines overall ecosystem stability and functioning. Ecological research has identified a multitude of mechanisms that contribute to this balance, but ecologists are now challenged with predicting responses to global environmental changes. Despite a wealth of studies highlighting likely outcomes for specific mechanisms and subsets of a system (e.g., plants, plant-herbivore or predator-prey interactions), studies comparing overall effects of changes at multiple trophic levels are rare. We used a combination of experiments in a grassland system to test how biomass at the plant, herbivore and natural enemy (parasitoid) levels responds to the interactive effects of two key global change drivers: warming and nitrogen deposition. We found that higher temperatures and elevated nitrogen generated a multitrophic community that was increasingly dominated by herbivores. Moreover, we found synergistic effects of the drivers on biomass, which differed across trophic levels. Both absolute and relative biomass of herbivores increased disproportionately to that of plants and, in particular, parasitoids, which did not show any significant response to the treatments. Reduced parasitism rates mirrored the profound biomass changes in the system. These findings carry important implications for the response of biota to environmental changes; reduced top-down regulation is likely to coincide with an increase in herbivory, which in turn is likely to cascade to other fundamental ecosystem processes. Our findings also provide multitrophic data to support the general concern of increasing herbivore pest outbreaks in a warmer world. Public Library of Science 2012-07-18 /pmc/articles/PMC3399892/ /pubmed/22815763 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0040557 Text en de Sassi, Tylianakis. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited. |
| repository_type |
Open Access Journal |
| institution_category |
Foreign Institution |
| institution |
US National Center for Biotechnology Information |
| building |
NCBI PubMed |
| collection |
Online Access |
| language |
English |
| format |
Online |
| author |
de Sassi, Claudio Tylianakis, Jason M. |
| spellingShingle |
de Sassi, Claudio Tylianakis, Jason M. Climate Change Disproportionately Increases Herbivore over Plant or Parasitoid Biomass |
| author_facet |
de Sassi, Claudio Tylianakis, Jason M. |
| author_sort |
de Sassi, Claudio |
| title |
Climate Change Disproportionately Increases Herbivore over Plant or Parasitoid Biomass |
| title_short |
Climate Change Disproportionately Increases Herbivore over Plant or Parasitoid Biomass |
| title_full |
Climate Change Disproportionately Increases Herbivore over Plant or Parasitoid Biomass |
| title_fullStr |
Climate Change Disproportionately Increases Herbivore over Plant or Parasitoid Biomass |
| title_full_unstemmed |
Climate Change Disproportionately Increases Herbivore over Plant or Parasitoid Biomass |
| title_sort |
climate change disproportionately increases herbivore over plant or parasitoid biomass |
| description |
All living organisms are linked through trophic relationships with resources and consumers, the balance of which determines overall ecosystem stability and functioning. Ecological research has identified a multitude of mechanisms that contribute to this balance, but ecologists are now challenged with predicting responses to global environmental changes. Despite a wealth of studies highlighting likely outcomes for specific mechanisms and subsets of a system (e.g., plants, plant-herbivore or predator-prey interactions), studies comparing overall effects of changes at multiple trophic levels are rare. We used a combination of experiments in a grassland system to test how biomass at the plant, herbivore and natural enemy (parasitoid) levels responds to the interactive effects of two key global change drivers: warming and nitrogen deposition. We found that higher temperatures and elevated nitrogen generated a multitrophic community that was increasingly dominated by herbivores. Moreover, we found synergistic effects of the drivers on biomass, which differed across trophic levels. Both absolute and relative biomass of herbivores increased disproportionately to that of plants and, in particular, parasitoids, which did not show any significant response to the treatments. Reduced parasitism rates mirrored the profound biomass changes in the system. These findings carry important implications for the response of biota to environmental changes; reduced top-down regulation is likely to coincide with an increase in herbivory, which in turn is likely to cascade to other fundamental ecosystem processes. Our findings also provide multitrophic data to support the general concern of increasing herbivore pest outbreaks in a warmer world. |
| publisher |
Public Library of Science |
| publishDate |
2012 |
| url |
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3399892/ |
| _version_ |
1611543903848103936 |