Who's hot and who's not: ocean warming alters species dominance through competitive displacement.
Species interactions have received little attention in climate-change studies, yet these interactions are fundamental to the functioning of ecosystems. Milazzo et al. (2013) combined field surveys and controlled experiments to show how increasing abundance of a range-extending species and ocean warming interactively affect the habitat occupancy of two co-occurring species with similar habitat preferences. The authors found that in warmer conditions the 'cool-water' species is competitively displaced from preferred algal habitat to sub-optimal seagrass habitat, but only at higher densities of the warm-water species. Their results provide an important first step for unravelling how simple species interactions can create novel communities.
Southern Seas Ecology Laboratories, School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, The University of Adelaide, DX 650 418, Adelaide, SA, 5005, Australia.
Ivan
I
Nagelkerken
Stephen D
SD
Simpson
D000818:Animals; D057231:Climate Change; D017753:Ecosystem; D005399:Fishes / Q000145:classification* / Q000502:physiology*