Warm and fragile: Temperature and vulnerability to extinction in pelagic food webs

温度的升高可能会加强水生变温动物食物网中的摄食联系和竞争性相互作用。这项研究的目的是测试温度升高是否会导致物种数量的大幅波动、顶级捕食者的迅速消失以及竞争排斥的加速。这种不稳定可能导致级联灭绝和群落关闭，这对水生生态系统的管理和保护具有深远的影响。我建议将实验和理论研究相结合，以提供关于温度上升如何影响(1)藻类、草食动物、杂食动物和食肉动物等多营养群落的动态和内部组织的机制见解，(2)这些群落中种群持续存在或崩溃的可能性，以及(3)当物种损失已经发生时，群落变得封闭或保持开放的可能性。

A rise in temperature may intensify both feeding links and competitive interactions in food webs of aquatic ectotherms. The proposed research aims to test whether elevated temperatures lead to high amplitude population fluctuations, a rapid loss of top predators and accelerated rates of competitive exclusion. Such destabilisation could lead to cascading extinctions and community closure, which has profound implications for the management and conservation of aquatic ecosystems. I propose a combination of experimental and theoretical research, to provide mechanistic insight into how a rise in temperature affects (i) the dynamics and internal organization of multi-trophic communities of algae, herbivores, omnivores and carnivores, (ii) the chances that populations within these communities persist or collapse, and (iii) the probability that communities become closed, or remain open to recovery, when species losses have already happened.