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Linking species traits and demography to explain complex temperature responses across levels of organization.

Publication ,  Journal Article
Wieczynski, DJ; Singla, P; Doan, A; Singleton, A; Han, Z-Y; Votzke, S; Yammine, A; Gibert, JP
Published in: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
October 2021

Microbial communities regulate ecosystem responses to climate change. However, predicting these responses is challenging because of complex interactions among processes at multiple levels of organization. Organismal traits that determine individual performance and ecological interactions are essential for scaling up environmental responses from individuals to ecosystems. We combine protist microcosm experiments and mathematical models to show that key traits-cell size, shape, and contents-each explain different aspects of species' demographic responses to changes in temperature. These differences in species' temperature responses have complex cascading effects across levels of organization-causing nonlinear shifts in total community respiration rates across temperatures via coordinated changes in community composition, equilibrium densities, and community-mean species mass in experimental protist communities that tightly match theoretical predictions. Our results suggest that traits explain variation in population growth, and together, these two factors scale up to influence community- and ecosystem-level processes across temperatures. Connecting the multilevel microbial processes that ultimately influence climate in this way will help refine predictions about complex ecosystem-climate feedbacks and the pace of climate change itself.

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Published In

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

DOI

EISSN

1091-6490

ISSN

0027-8424

Publication Date

October 2021

Volume

118

Issue

42

Start / End Page

e2104863118

Related Subject Headings

  • Temperature
  • Species Specificity
  • Microbiota
  • Ecosystem
  • Climate Change
 

Citation

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Wieczynski, D. J., Singla, P., Doan, A., Singleton, A., Han, Z.-Y., Votzke, S., … Gibert, J. P. (2021). Linking species traits and demography to explain complex temperature responses across levels of organization. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 118(42), e2104863118. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2104863118
Wieczynski, Daniel J., Pranav Singla, Adrian Doan, Alexandra Singleton, Ze-Yi Han, Samantha Votzke, Andrea Yammine, and Jean P. Gibert. “Linking species traits and demography to explain complex temperature responses across levels of organization.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 118, no. 42 (October 2021): e2104863118. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2104863118.
Wieczynski DJ, Singla P, Doan A, Singleton A, Han Z-Y, Votzke S, et al. Linking species traits and demography to explain complex temperature responses across levels of organization. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 2021 Oct;118(42):e2104863118.
Wieczynski, Daniel J., et al. “Linking species traits and demography to explain complex temperature responses across levels of organization.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, vol. 118, no. 42, Oct. 2021, p. e2104863118. Epmc, doi:10.1073/pnas.2104863118.
Wieczynski DJ, Singla P, Doan A, Singleton A, Han Z-Y, Votzke S, Yammine A, Gibert JP. Linking species traits and demography to explain complex temperature responses across levels of organization. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 2021 Oct;118(42):e2104863118.
Journal cover image

Published In

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

DOI

EISSN

1091-6490

ISSN

0027-8424

Publication Date

October 2021

Volume

118

Issue

42

Start / End Page

e2104863118

Related Subject Headings

  • Temperature
  • Species Specificity
  • Microbiota
  • Ecosystem
  • Climate Change