Journal
ECOLOGY LETTERS
Volume 20, Issue 10, Pages 1250-1260Publisher
WILEY
DOI: 10.1111/ele.12820
Keywords
Global warming; gross primary production; metabolic theory
Categories
Funding
- NERC Case studentship
- ERC starting grant [677278 TEMPDEP]
- University of Exeter
- NERC [NE/P001130/1] Funding Source: UKRI
- Natural Environment Research Council [1354751, NE/P001130/1] Funding Source: researchfish
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Gross primary production (GPP) is the largest flux in the carbon cycle, yet its response to global warming is highly uncertain. The temperature dependence of GPP is directly linked to photosynthetic physiology, but the response of GPP to warming over longer timescales could also be shaped by ecological and evolutionary processes that drive variation in community structure and functional trait distributions. Here, we show that selection on photosynthetic traits within and across taxa dampens the effects of temperature on GPP across a catchment of geothermally heated streams. Autotrophs from cold streams had higher photosynthetic rates and after accounting for differences in biomass among sites, biomass-specific GPP was independent of temperature in spite of a 20 degrees C thermal gradient. Our results suggest that temperature compensation of photosynthetic rates constrains the long-term temperature dependence of GPP, and highlights the importance of considering physiological, ecological and evolutionary mechanisms when predicting how ecosystem-level processes respond to warming.
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