Journal ArticleDOI
Climate warming and ectotherm body size – from individual physiology to community ecology
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TLDR
This review discusses the underlying physiological mechanisms of changes in ectotherm body size and addresses observed responses within a broad ecological context at different levels of organization, from individuals to communities, particularly in aquatic systems.Abstract:
Summary
Accumulating evidence suggests that the average body size of many organisms is declining in response to climate warming. This phenomenon has been suggested to represent a universal response to warming that may impose significant adverse effects on ecosystem functioning and services.
However, we do not have a thorough understanding of why body sizes are commonly declining, and why some organisms show the opposite response. Because ectotherms constitute the vast majority of organism biomass and about 99% of species worldwide, it is particularly important to understand how ectotherms respond to a warming climate.
This review discusses the underlying physiological mechanisms of changes in ectotherm body size and addresses observed responses within a broad ecological context at different levels of organization, from individuals to communities, particularly in aquatic systems.
Warming-induced responses in average body size are not only determined by changes in rates of individual growth and development, but also mediated through size-dependent feedbacks at the population level, as well as competitive and predatory interactions within the community. Emergent properties at higher organizational levels have already been observed in both experimental and natural systems.
Various approaches will be required for enhancing our knowledge about the importance of such processes in natural systems. These include controlled semi-natural experiments and phylogenetic comparisons as well as statistical models of time-series data and theoretical models linking climate effects at the individual, population and community levels.
Understanding causes of observed changes in organism body sizes and how these depend on the ecological context is essential for improving our predictions and the management of ecosystems in the face of a warming climate.read more
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
Warming temperatures and smaller body sizes : synchronous changes in growth of North Sea fishes
TL;DR: A recent model-derived prediction that fish size will shrink in response to climate-induced changes in temperature and oxygen is supported, as the smaller body sizes being projected for the future are already detectable in the North Sea.
Journal ArticleDOI
Is metabolic rate a universal 'pacemaker' for biological processes?
TL;DR: It is argued that a comprehensive understanding of the pace of life must include how biological activities depend on both energy and information and their environmentally sensitive interaction, supported by extensive evidence showing that hormones and other regulatory factors and signalling systems coordinate the processes of growth, metabolism and food intake in adaptive ways that are responsive to an organism's internal and external conditions.
Journal ArticleDOI
Sound physiological knowledge and principles in modeling shrinking of fishes under climate change
TL;DR: Here, it is re-asserted, with the Gill-Oxygen Limitation Theory (GOLT), that gills, which must retain the properties of open surfaces because their growth, even while hyperallometric, cannot keep up with the demand of growing three-dimensional bodies.
Journal ArticleDOI
Widespread rapid reductions in body size of adult salamanders in response to climate change.
TL;DR: Compared historic and contemporary size measurements in 15 Plethodon species from 102 populations and found that six species exhibited significant reductions in body size over 55 years, consistent with a plastic response of body size to climate change through reductions inBody size as mediated through increased metabolism.
Journal ArticleDOI
Post-2020 biodiversity targets need to embrace climate change
Almut Arneth,Yunne-Jai Shin,Paul Leadley,Carlo Rondinini,Elena Bukvareva,Melanie Kolb,Guy F. Midgley,Thierry Oberdorff,Ignacio Palomo,Ignacio Palomo,Osamu Saito +10 more
TL;DR: This analysis suggests that the next set of biodiversity targets explicitly addresses climate change-related risks since many aspirational goals will not be feasible under even lower-end projections of future warming.
References
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Camille Parmesan,Gary W. Yohe +1 more
TL;DR: A diagnostic fingerprint of temporal and spatial ‘sign-switching’ responses uniquely predicted by twentieth century climate trends is defined and generates ‘very high confidence’ (as laid down by the IPCC) that climate change is already affecting living systems.
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TL;DR: A review of the ecological impacts of recent climate change exposes a coherent pattern of ecological change across systems, from polar terrestrial to tropical marine environments.
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Ecological and Evolutionary Responses to Recent Climate Change
TL;DR: Range-restricted species, particularly polar and mountaintop species, show severe range contractions and have been the first groups in which entire species have gone extinct due to recent climate change.
Journal ArticleDOI
Extinction risk from climate change
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Book
The Ecological Implications of Body Size
TL;DR: In this paper, a philosophical introduction is given to logarithms, power curves, and correlations, and a mathematical primer: logarsithm, power curve and correlations.