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Using Historical and Experimental Data to Reveal Warming Effects on Ant Assemblages

Historical records of species are compared with current records to elucidate effects of recent climate change. However, confounding variables such as succession, land-use change, and species invasions make it difficult to demonstrate a causal link between changes in biota and changes in climate. Exp...

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Autores principales: Resasco, Julian, Pelini, Shannon L., Stuble, Katharine L., Sanders, Nathan J., Dunn, Robert R., Diamond, Sarah E., Ellison, Aaron M., Gotelli, Nicholas J., Levey, Douglas J.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2014
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3913719/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24505364
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0088029
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author Resasco, Julian
Pelini, Shannon L.
Stuble, Katharine L.
Sanders, Nathan J.
Dunn, Robert R.
Diamond, Sarah E.
Ellison, Aaron M.
Gotelli, Nicholas J.
Levey, Douglas J.
author_facet Resasco, Julian
Pelini, Shannon L.
Stuble, Katharine L.
Sanders, Nathan J.
Dunn, Robert R.
Diamond, Sarah E.
Ellison, Aaron M.
Gotelli, Nicholas J.
Levey, Douglas J.
author_sort Resasco, Julian
collection PubMed
description Historical records of species are compared with current records to elucidate effects of recent climate change. However, confounding variables such as succession, land-use change, and species invasions make it difficult to demonstrate a causal link between changes in biota and changes in climate. Experiments that manipulate temperature can overcome this issue of attribution, but long-term impacts of warming are difficult to test directly. Here we combine historical and experimental data to explore effects of warming on ant assemblages in southeastern US. Observational data span a 35-year period (1976–2011), during which mean annual temperatures had an increasing trend. Mean summer temperatures in 2010–2011 were ∼2.7°C warmer than in 1976. Experimental data come from an ongoing study in the same region, for which temperatures have been increased ∼1.5–5.5°C above ambient from 2010 to 2012. Ant species richness and evenness decreased with warming under natural but not experimental warming. These discrepancies could have resulted from differences in timescales of warming, abiotic or biotic factors, or initial species pools. Species turnover tended to increase with temperature in observational and experimental datasets. At the species level, the observational and experimental datasets had four species in common, two of which exhibited consistent patterns between datasets. With natural and experimental warming, collections of the numerically dominant, thermophilic species, Crematogaster lineolata, increased roughly two-fold. Myrmecina americana, a relatively heat intolerant species, decreased with temperature in natural and experimental warming. In contrast, species in the Solenopsis molesta group did not show consistent responses to warming, and Temenothorax pergandei was rare across temperatures. Our results highlight the difficulty of interpreting community responses to warming based on historical records or experiments alone. Because some species showed consistent responses to warming based on thermal tolerances, understanding functional traits may prove useful in explaining responses of species to warming.
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spelling pubmed-39137192014-02-06 Using Historical and Experimental Data to Reveal Warming Effects on Ant Assemblages Resasco, Julian Pelini, Shannon L. Stuble, Katharine L. Sanders, Nathan J. Dunn, Robert R. Diamond, Sarah E. Ellison, Aaron M. Gotelli, Nicholas J. Levey, Douglas J. PLoS One Research Article Historical records of species are compared with current records to elucidate effects of recent climate change. However, confounding variables such as succession, land-use change, and species invasions make it difficult to demonstrate a causal link between changes in biota and changes in climate. Experiments that manipulate temperature can overcome this issue of attribution, but long-term impacts of warming are difficult to test directly. Here we combine historical and experimental data to explore effects of warming on ant assemblages in southeastern US. Observational data span a 35-year period (1976–2011), during which mean annual temperatures had an increasing trend. Mean summer temperatures in 2010–2011 were ∼2.7°C warmer than in 1976. Experimental data come from an ongoing study in the same region, for which temperatures have been increased ∼1.5–5.5°C above ambient from 2010 to 2012. Ant species richness and evenness decreased with warming under natural but not experimental warming. These discrepancies could have resulted from differences in timescales of warming, abiotic or biotic factors, or initial species pools. Species turnover tended to increase with temperature in observational and experimental datasets. At the species level, the observational and experimental datasets had four species in common, two of which exhibited consistent patterns between datasets. With natural and experimental warming, collections of the numerically dominant, thermophilic species, Crematogaster lineolata, increased roughly two-fold. Myrmecina americana, a relatively heat intolerant species, decreased with temperature in natural and experimental warming. In contrast, species in the Solenopsis molesta group did not show consistent responses to warming, and Temenothorax pergandei was rare across temperatures. Our results highlight the difficulty of interpreting community responses to warming based on historical records or experiments alone. Because some species showed consistent responses to warming based on thermal tolerances, understanding functional traits may prove useful in explaining responses of species to warming. Public Library of Science 2014-02-04 /pmc/articles/PMC3913719/ /pubmed/24505364 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0088029 Text en © 2014 Resasco et al 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.
spellingShingle Research Article
Resasco, Julian
Pelini, Shannon L.
Stuble, Katharine L.
Sanders, Nathan J.
Dunn, Robert R.
Diamond, Sarah E.
Ellison, Aaron M.
Gotelli, Nicholas J.
Levey, Douglas J.
Using Historical and Experimental Data to Reveal Warming Effects on Ant Assemblages
title Using Historical and Experimental Data to Reveal Warming Effects on Ant Assemblages
title_full Using Historical and Experimental Data to Reveal Warming Effects on Ant Assemblages
title_fullStr Using Historical and Experimental Data to Reveal Warming Effects on Ant Assemblages
title_full_unstemmed Using Historical and Experimental Data to Reveal Warming Effects on Ant Assemblages
title_short Using Historical and Experimental Data to Reveal Warming Effects on Ant Assemblages
title_sort using historical and experimental data to reveal warming effects on ant assemblages
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3913719/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24505364
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0088029
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