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bioRxiv · 10.1101/2024.01.17.575983

Non-linear growth-temperature relationship leads toopposite responses to warming in cold versus warmpopulations

Lindmark, M.·Ohlberger, J.·Gardmark, A.
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Abstract

Body size is a key functional trait that has declined in many biological communities, partly due to changes in individual growth rates in response to climate warming. However, our understanding of growth responses in natural ecosystems is limited by relatively short time series without large temperature contrasts and unknown levels of adaptation to local temperatures across populations. In this study, we collated back-calculated length-at-age data for the fish Eurasian perch (Perca fluviatilis) from 10 populations along the Baltic Sea coast between 1953-2015 (142023 length-at-age measurements). We fitted individual-level growth trajectories using the von Bertalanffy growth equation, and reconstructed local temperature time series using generalized additive models fitted to three data sources. Leveraging a uniquely large temperature contrast due to climate change and artificial heating, we then estimated population-specific and global growth-temperature relationships using Bayesian mixed models, and evaluated if they conformed to local adaption or not. We found little evidence for local adaptation in the temperature-dependence of individual growth curves. Instead, population-specific curves mapped onto a global curve, resulting in body growth increasing with warming in cold populations but decreasing in warm populations. Understanding to which degree the effects of warming on growth and size are population-specific is critical for generalizing predictions of climate impacts on growth, which is a key biological trait affecting multiple levels of biological organisation from individuals to ecosystem functioning.

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Lindmark, M., Ohlberger, J., Gardmark, A.. 2024-01-20. Non-linear growth-temperature relationship leads toopposite responses to warming in cold versus warmpopulations. https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.01.17.575983

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