Journal
PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY B-BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
Volume 367, Issue 1605, Pages 2955-2961Publisher
ROYAL SOC
DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2012.0235
Keywords
body mass; climate warming; exotic earthworms; trophic interactions; soil food webs
Categories
Funding
- Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) [Ei 862/1-1]
- USDA-CSREES
- Wilderness Research Foundation
- U.S. National Science Foundation
- Isle Royale National Park
- Robbins Chair in Sustainable Management of the Environment
- Division Of Environmental Biology
- Direct For Biological Sciences [0918247] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
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As the climate warms, boreal tree species are expected to be gradually replaced by temperate species within the southern boreal forest. Warming will be accompanied by changes in above-and below-ground consumers: large moose (Alces alces) replaced by smaller deer (Odocoileus virginianus) above-ground, and small detritivores replaced by larger exotic earthworms below-ground. These shifts may induce a cascade of ecological impacts across trophic levels that could alter the boreal to temperate forest transition. Deer are more likely to browse saplings of temperate tree species, and European earthworms favour seedlings of boreal tree species more than temperate species, potentially hindering the ability of temperate tree species to expand northwards. We hypothesize that warming-induced changes in consumers will lead to novel plant communities by changing the filter on plant species success, and that above-and below-ground cascades of trophic interactions will allow boreal tree species to persist during early phases of warming, leading to an abrupt change at a later time. The synthesis of evidence suggests that consumers can modify the climate change-induced transition of ecosystems.
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