Biology subjects

Kalinkat, G.

Publications and source records attributed to Kalinkat, G..

3 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2018

Complex responses of global insect pests to climate change

Insect pests strongly affect the productivity and profitability of agriculture and forestry. Despite the well-known sensitivity of insects to abiotic effects such as temperature, their potential responses to ongoing climate change remain unclear. Here we compile and review documented climate change responses of 31 of the globally most impactful phytophagous insect pests, focussing on species for which long-term, high-quality data are available. Most of the selected species show at least one response affecting their severity as pests, including changes in geographic range, population dynamics, life-history traits, and/or trophic interactions. Of the studied pests, 41% only show responses that are linked to increased pest severity, 4% only show responses of decreased severity, whereas importantly 55%, the majority of studied pests, show mixed responses including both increased and decreased severity under ongoing climate change. Variability in impact is further supported by a thermal sensitivity analysis showing little benefit of climate warming in relation to the optimal developmental temperatures for the majority of these pests under both current climate and future projections. Overall the results show that calculating the net effect of climate change on phytophagous insect pest impact is far from straightforward. The documented variation in responses, e.g. between agricultural and forest pests, indicates that efforts to mitigate undesirable climate change effects must target individual species, taking into account the complex ecological and evolutionary mechanisms underlying their responses.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2018

Susceptibility of European freshwater fish to climate change: species profiling based on life-history and environmental characteristics

Climate change is expected to strongly affect freshwater fish communities. Combined with other anthropogenic impacts, the impacts will alter species distributions and contribute to population declines and local extinctions. To provide timely management and conservation of fishes, it is relevant to identify species that will be most impacted by climate change and those that will be resilient. Species traits are considered a promising source of information on characteristics that influence resilience to various environmental conditions and impacts. We collated life history traits and climatic niches of 443 European freshwater fish species and compared those identified as susceptible to climate change to those that are considered to be resilient. Significant differences were observed between the two groups in their distribution, life-history and climatic niches, with climate-change susceptible species being distributed more southwardly within Europe, and being characterized by higher threat levels, lower commercial relevance, lower vulnerability to fishing, smaller body size and warmer thermal envelopes. We establish a list of species revealed to be of highest priority for further research and monitoring regarding climate change susceptibility within Europe. The presented approach represents a promising tool, to quickly assess large groups of species regarding their susceptibility to climate change and other threats, and to identify research and management priorities.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2017

Experimental duration and predator satiation levels systematically affect functional response parameters

Empirical feeding studies where density-dependent consumption rates are fitted to functional response models are often used to parametrize the interaction strengths in models of population or food-web dynamics. However, the relationship between functional response parameter estimates from short-term feeding studies and real-world, long-term, trophic interaction strengths remains largely untested. In a critical first step to address this void, we tested for systematic effects of experimental duration and predator satiation on the estimation of functional response parameters, namely attack rate and handling time. Analyzing a large data set covering a wide range of predator taxonomies and body sizes we show that attack rates decrease with increasing experimental duration, and that handling times of starved predators are consistently shorter than those of satiated predators. Therefore, both the experimental duration and the predator satiation level have a strong and systematic impact on the predictions of population dynamics and food-web stability. Our study highlights potential pitfalls at the intersection of empirical and theoretical applications of functional responses. We conclude our study with some practical suggestions how these implications should be addressed in the future to improve predictive abilities and realism in models of predator-prey interactions.

ecology↗