title: Early warning signals detect critical impacts of experimental warming.
abstract: Earth's surface temperatures are projected to increase by ~1-4°C over the next century, threatening the future of global biodiversity and ecosystem stability. While this has fueled major progress in the field of physiological trait responses to warming, it is currently unclear whether routine population monitoring data can be used to predict temperature-induced population collapse. Here, we integrate trait performance theory with that of critical tipping points to test whether early warning signals can be reliably used to anticipate thermally induced extinction events. We find that a model parameterized by experimental growth rates exhibits critical slowing down in the vicinity of an experimentally tested critical threshold, suggesting that dynamical early warning signals may be useful in detecting the potentially precipitous onset of population collapse due to global climate change.
authors.affiliation: Department of Integrative Biology University of Guelph Guelph Ontario N1G 2W1 Canada.
authors.forename: Lauren
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Jarvis
authors.affiliation: Department of Integrative Biology University of Guelph Guelph Ontario N1G 2W1 Canada.
authors.forename: Kevin
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: McCann
authors.affiliation: Center for Limnology University of Wisconsin Madison Madison Wisconsin 53706.
authors.forename: Tyler
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Tunney
authors.affiliation: Department of Environmental Science and Policy University of California Davis Davis California 95616.
authors.forename: Gabriel
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Gellner
authors.affiliation: Department of Integrative Biology University of Guelph Guelph Ontario N1G 2W1 Canada.
authors.forename: John M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Fryxell
keywords: Climate warming; early warning signals; ecology; population extinction; statistical indicators of collapse; thermal performance