Journal
GLOBAL CHANGE BIOLOGY
Volume 19, Issue 10, Pages 3062-3068Publisher
WILEY
DOI: 10.1111/gcb.12299
Keywords
Bergmann's rule; community interactions; food-web structure; life history; metabolic theory of ecology; niche theory; predator-prey size ratio; size distributions; temperature-size rule; thermal reaction norms
Funding
- French National Research Agency
- ANR BLANC
- PHYTBACK [10-BLAN-1709-01]
- ANR CEPS
- PULSE project
- ANR PEXT
- EVORANGE project
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The unprecedented rate of global warming requires a better understanding of how ecosystems will respond. Organisms often have smaller body sizes under warmer climates (Bergmann's rule and the temperature-size rule), and body size is a major determinant of life histories, demography, population size, nutrient turnover rate, and food-web structure. Therefore, by altering body sizes in whole communities, current warming can potentially disrupt ecosystem function and services. However, the underlying drivers of warming-induced body downsizing remain far from clear. Here, we show that thermal clines in body size are predicted from universal laws of ecology and metabolism, so that size-dependent selection from competition (both intra and interspecific) and predation favors smaller individuals under warmer conditions. We validate this prediction using 4.1x10(6) individual body size measurements from French river fish spanning 29years and 52 species. Our results suggest that warming-induced body downsizing is an emergent property of size-structured food webs, and highlight the need to consider trophic interactions when predicting biosphere reorganizations under global warming.
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