RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Metabolic traits predict the effects of warming on phytoplankton competition
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 227868
DO 10.1101/227868
A1 Elvire Bestion
A1 Bernardo Garcia-Carreras
A1 Charlotte-Elisa Schaum
A1 Samraat Pawar
A1 Gabriel Yvon-Durocher
YR 2017
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/12/03/227868.abstract
AB Understanding how changes in temperature affect interspecific competition is critical for predicting changes in ecological communities as the climate warms. Here we develop a simple theoretical model that links interspecific differences in metabolic traits, which capture the temperature-dependence of resource acquisition, to the outcome of pairwise competition in phytoplankton. We parameterised our model with metabolic traits derived from six species of freshwater phytoplankton and tested its ability to predict the outcome of competition in all pairwise combinations of the species in a factorial experiment, manipulating temperature and nutrient availability. The model correctly predicted the outcome of competition in 71% of the pairwise experiments. These results demonstrate that metabolic traits play a key role in determining how changes in temperature influence interspecific competition and lay the foundation for developing theory to predict the effects of warming in complex, multi-species communities.