Kenna, D orcid.org/0000-0001-9427-697X, Fincham, WNW orcid.org/0000-0003-0614-3937, Dunn, AM orcid.org/0000-0002-4855-1077 et al. (2 more authors) (2017) Antagonistic effects of biological invasion and environmental warming on detritus processing in freshwater ecosystems. Oecologia, 183 (3). pp. 875-886. ISSN 0029-8549
Abstract
Global biodiversity is threatened by multiple anthropogenic stressors but little is known about the combined effects of environmental warming and invasive species on ecosystem functioning. We quantified thermal preferences and then compared leaf-litter processing rates at eight different temperatures (5.0-22.5°C) by the invasive freshwater crustacean Dikerogammarus villosus and the Great Britain native Gammarus pulex at a range of body sizes. D. villosus preferred warmer temperatures but there was considerable overlap in the range of temperatures that the two species occupied during preference trials. When matched for size, G. pulex had a greater leaf shredding efficiency than D. villosus, suggesting that invasion and subsequent displacement of the native amphipod will result in reduced ecosystem functioning. However, D. villosus is an inherently larger species and interspecific variation in shredding was reduced when animals of a representative size range were compared. D. villosus shredding rates increased at a faster rate than G. pulex with increasing temperature suggesting that climate change may offset some of the reduction in function. D. villosus, but not G. pulex, showed evidence of an ability to select those temperatures at which its shredding rate was maximised, and the activation energy for shredding in D. villosus was more similar to predictions from metabolic theory. While per capita and mass-corrected shredding rates were lower in the invasive D. villosus than the native G. pulex, our study provides novel insights in to how the interactive effects of metabolic function, body size, behavioural thermoregulation, and density produce antagonistic effects between anthropogenic stressors.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2016. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. |
Keywords: | leaf-litter; amphipod; climate change; resource processing; temperature |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Biological Sciences (Leeds) > School of Biology (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 07 Dec 2016 09:30 |
Last Modified: | 13 Oct 2017 13:39 |
Published Version: | https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-016-3796-x |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Springer Verlag |
Identification Number: | 10.1007/s00442-016-3796-x |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:109018 |