Aridity and land use negatively influence a dominant species' upper critical thermal limits

PeerJ

article

Nigel R. Andrew¹  Cara Miller²  Graham Hall¹  Zac Hemmings¹  Ian Oliver¹ 

[1] School of Environmental and Rural Science, University of New England;School of Science and Technology, University of New England;Office of Environment and Heritage

关键词: Formicidae;    Climate change;    Landscape adaptation;    Land cover;    Land use;    Thermal stress;    Critical thermal maximum;    Critical thermal minimum;    Insect;    Ant;   

DOI  :  10.7717/peerj.6252

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Inra

【 摘 要 】

Understanding the physiological tolerances of ectotherms, such as thermal limits, is important in predicting biotic responses to climate change. However, it is even more important to examine these impacts alongside those from other landscape changes: such as the reduction of native vegetation cover, landscape fragmentation and changes in land use intensity (LUI). Here, we integrate the observed thermal limits of the dominant and ubiquitous meat ant Iridomyrmex purpureus across climate (aridity), land cover and land use gradients spanning 270 km in length and 840 m in altitude across northern New South Wales, Australia. Meat ants were chosen for study as they are ecosystem engineers and changes in their populations may result in a cascade of changes in the populations of other species. When we assessed critical thermal maximum temperatures (CTmax) of meat ants in relation to the environmental gradients we found little influence of climate (aridity) but that CTmax decreased as LUI increased. We found no overall correlation between CTmax and CTmin. We did however find that tolerance to warming was lower for ants sampled from more arid locations. Our findings suggest that as LUI and aridification increase, the physiological resilience of I. purpureus will decline. A reduction in physiological resilience may lead to a reduction in the ecosystem service provision that these populations provide throughout their distribution.

【 授权许可】

CC BY