title: Climate change, keystone predation, and biodiversity loss.
abstract: Climate change can affect organisms both directly via physiological stress and indirectly via changing relationships among species. However, we do not fully understand how changing interspecific relationships contribute to community- and ecosystem-level responses to environmental forcing. I used experiments and spatial and temporal comparisons to demonstrate that warming substantially reduces predator-free space on rocky shores. The vertical extent of mussel beds decreased by 51% in 52 years, and reproductive populations of mussels disappeared at several sites. Prey species were able to occupy a hot, extralimital site if predation pressure was experimentally reduced, and local species richness more than doubled as a result. These results suggest that anthropogenic climate change can alter interspecific interactions and produce unexpected changes in species distributions, community structure, and diversity.
authors: Department of Zoology and Biodiversity Research Centre, University of British Columbia, 6270 University Boulevard, Vancouver, BC, Canada. harley@zoology.ubc.ca
authors: Christopher D G
authors: CD
authors: Harley
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D059001:Aquatic Organisms; D044822:Biodiversity; D049872:Bivalvia; D057231:Climate Change; D017753:Ecosystem; D019015:Geologic Sediments; D007448:Invertebrates; D009792:Oceans and Seas; D011157:Population Dynamics; D011235:Predatory Behavior; D013215:Starfish; D013696:Temperature; D001468:Thoracica