Effects of climate change on the structure of food webs in latitudinal gradients

Abstract

Global biodiversity is declining at unprecedented rate mostly due to the stressors such as climate change and habitat alteration. Effects of such global changes on the structure, stability and functioning of natural complex networks (food webs) is poorly understood, especially in the tropics. A broad and audacious project, partially funded by FAPESP (# 2012/51143-3) under my coordination and managed by an international team, was recently completed successfully. This project investigated large congruencies and contingencies between climate change, community structure and ecosystem functioning through rainfall manipulation in natural microcosms (bromeliads) along a wide biogeographic gradient in Latin America (from Costa Rica to Argentina; 6 countries). My team in Brazil already achieved the goals and objectives of this project successfully, and plan to further analyze and reproduce complex networks of trophic interactions from this extensive database. In parallel, food webs of bromeliad-living fauna will be constructed from an extensive database collected in 12 open restingas along the Brazilian coast across a wide range of latitudes (-12.6 to -27.6, ca. 2000 km in a straight line) and climates (” average annual temperature = 5.3oC). Therefore, this project combines experimental and observational databases to investigate: (i) how the changes in rainfall regimes expected for the next few decades, and (ii) how natural climate variations across latitudinal gradients (bioclimatic components extracted from WordClim) alter the structure of complex ecological networks embedded within a biogeographical context. This project will be performed at the Queen Mary University of London (UK) where I will receive a strong logistical, theoretical and analytical support from the Drs. Pavel Kratina, Elizabeth Clare and Athen Ma.