Metabolic plasticity can amplify ecosystem responses to global warming

Rebecca L. Kordas, Samraat Pawar, Dimitrios-Georgios Kontopoulos, Guy Woodward and Eoin J. O’Gorman ()
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Rebecca L. Kordas: Imperial College London
Samraat Pawar: Imperial College London
Dimitrios-Georgios Kontopoulos: LOEWE Centre for Translational Biodiversity Genomics
Guy Woodward: Imperial College London
Eoin J. O’Gorman: University of Essex

Nature Communications, 2022, vol. 13, issue 1, 1-8

Abstract: Abstract Organisms have the capacity to alter their physiological response to warming through acclimation or adaptation, but the consequence of this metabolic plasticity for energy flow through food webs is currently unknown, and a generalisable framework does not exist for modelling its ecosystem-level effects. Here, using temperature-controlled experiments on stream invertebrates from a natural thermal gradient, we show that the ability of organisms to raise their metabolic rate following chronic exposure to warming decreases with increasing body size. Chronic exposure to higher temperatures also increases the acute thermal sensitivity of whole-organismal metabolic rate, independent of body size. A mathematical model parameterised with these findings shows that metabolic plasticity could account for 60% higher ecosystem energy flux with just +2 °C of warming than a traditional model based on ecological metabolic theory. This could explain why long-term warming amplifies ecosystem respiration rates through time in recent mesocosm experiments, and highlights the need to embed metabolic plasticity in predictive models of global warming impacts on ecosystems.

Date: 2022
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DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-29808-1

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