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Biology subjects

Kamal, P.

Publications and source records attributed to Kamal, P..

2 recordsLinked to original sources

Warming-induced switches in dominance are built into intraguild predation systems

Warming affects food webs globally. In the iconic intraguild predation food web module consisting of a basal resource, a specialist consumer, and an omnivorous predator, resource enrichment can favor the predator by increasing the relative importance of intraguild predation compared to resource competition. Here, we integrate empirically established thermal scaling relationships into a model of intraguild predation. We show that warming can shift the power balance between consumer and predator and affect invasion and equilibrium outcomes by inducing changes to resource enrichment - without any differences in thermal optima between species. The nature of these shifts depends on the thermal scaling of resource self-regulation and the strength of resource top-down regulation. We also test the capacity of several generic early warning signals to predict these shifts and find variance-based indicators to be more reliable than autocorrelation-based ones. Our results have implications for predictive food web ecology and biocontrol applications under global change.

ecology↗

Dispersal evolution can only rescue a limited set of species from climate change

Anthropogenic climate change threatens biodiversity on Earth. In response, species can adapt evolutionarily to changing environments or shift their ranges via dispersal. However, dispersal itself can evolve on ecological timescales. We explore theoretically how dispersal evolution modulates the response of metacommunities to climate change. We find that this response depends on the environmental conditions prior to climate change. Variable environments harbour few, dispersive species that are likely to survive climate change by shifting their ranges with their evolved dispersal abilities. Stable environments house many, less dispersive species. Their survival during climate change is less likely, as they can evolve robust, low dispersal traits that prevent range shifts. We identify a limited set of scenarios in which contemporary dispersal evolution can rescue species from climate change, highlighting the importance of species evolutionary histories and evolutionary rates, as determined by their genotype-phenotype maps, for their responses to rapid environmental change.

ecology↗