Species' responses to climate change and their effects on community structure and ecosystem function

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Climate change has the potential to cause massive disruption to biological systems. Therefore, understanding and predicting the responses of species, communities and ecosystems to climate change are among the greatest challenges facing biologists today. Recent research has identified climate-induced shifts in the distribution and abundance of a variety of taxa, but has focused on individual species in isolation. As such shifts occur, the composition of ecological communities and thus the set of interacting species present at particular sites will alter, with implications for associated ecosystem functions. Furthermore, previous research has been concerned largely with changes at species¿ cool range margins, where climate warming is likely to allow increases in abundance and distribution. I will investigate the effects of climate change on communities of dung beetles, a guild which plays a crucial role in nutrient cycling in terrestrial ecosystems. I will evaluate changes in species distributions, species richness and functional group composition as a result of recent climate change, using data from four well-documented dung beetle communities on a north-south transect across Europe. The contributions of dung beetle abundance, species richness and different inter-specific combinations to ecosystem function will be measured experimentally. This project will be a unique opportunity to evaluate the effect of climate change on terrestrial ecosystems as a function of changes in the structure of communities.