title: An index to measure the effects of temperature change on trophic interactions.
abstract: Experimental studies document the fact that environmental temperature changes can affect the timing of interactions in many consumer-resource systems through altered, or shifted, phenologies of the species involved. We develop a simple mathematical model that shows one method to measure, quantitatively, the magnitude of the shift. Under different temperature regimes we compute the intersection of two regions in a joint phenology space: the region where temporal interactions can occur and the region where particular-sized predators consume particular-sized prey. The area of the intersection provides a numerical value for measuring the effective interaction. A comparison of the areas for different temperature histories defines an index, or yardstick, for quantitatively assessing the effects of temperature variations on phenological shifts.
authors.affiliation: Department of Mathematics, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE 68588, USA. dlogan@math.unl.edu
authors.forename: J David
authors.initials: JD
authors.lastname: Logan
authors.forename: William
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Wolesensky
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001831:Body Temperature / Q000502:physiology; D002980:Climate; D017753:Ecosystem; D006128:Growth / Q000502:physiology*; D007313:Insecta / Q000502:physiology; D008954:Models, Biological; D063245:Plant Development; D011157:Population Dynamics; D011235:Predatory Behavior / Q000502:physiology; D013696:Temperature; D013997:Time Factors