Document Type

Article

Publication Date

December 2014

Publication Title

Global Change Biology

First Page

3834

Last Page

3844

Keywords

Carcinus maenas, Climate Change, Foraging, Nucella lapillus, Predation Risk, Predator-prey, Species Interactions, Temperature

Disciplines

Biology

Abstract

Predators are a major source of stress in natural systems because their prey must balance the benefits of feeding with the risk of being eaten. Although this 'fear' of being eaten often drives the organization and dynamics of many natural systems, we know little about how such risk effects will be altered by climate change. Here, we examined the interactive consequences of predator avoidance and projected climate warming in a three-level rocky intertidal food chain. We found that both predation risk and increased air and sea temperatures suppressed the foraging of prey in the middle trophic level, suggesting that warming may further enhance the top-down control of predators on communities. Prey growth efficiency, which measures the efficiency of energy transfer between trophic levels, became negative when prey were subjected to predation risk and warming. Thus, the combined effects of these stressors may represent an important tipping point for individual fitness and the efficiency of energy transfer in natural food chains. In contrast, we detected no adverse effects of warming on the top predator and the basal resources. Hence, the consequences of projected warming may be particularly challenging for intermediate consumers residing in food chains where risk dominates predator-prey interactions.

Comments

This is the pre-peer reviewed version of the following article: Miller, L.P., C.M. Matassa* & G.C. Trussell (2014). Climate change enhances the negative effects of predation risk on an intermediate consumer, which has been published in final form at http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/mec.12994. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving.

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