Predicting the effects of warming: from individual physiology to emergent ecosystem function

了解个体的生理如何制约生态系统的动态，对于预测气候变化对全球生物地球化学循环的影响至关重要。我最近的研究表明，随着气温的急剧上升，呼吸的速度比增长速度更快。这一现象的一个直接但未被探索的后果是，生长成本随着温度的升高而增加，从而导致预测，环境变暖的特征应该是通过食物链进行的能量转移效率较低，在营养水平较高的食物链中生物量较少。在这里，我建议通过一个研究计划来研究这一新的预测，该计划涉及新陈代谢、食物网络和进化理论的发展和整合，以及将个体生理学与生态系统和食物网络结构联系起来的一系列实验和现场测试。重要的是，这是第一次测量包括不同营养水平的多个相互作用的物种对气候变暖的短期(生理)和长期适应反应，以便预测和测试生态系统规模上的紧急模式。因此，该方案旨在提供一个预测框架，以帮助预测随着气候变暖，水生生态系统的功能和动态将如何发挥作用。发展这样一种认识具有根本和实际意义。从根本上说，这个框架有望通过梳理能量限制直接造成的影响，调和用来解释气候变暖对生态系统功能影响的多种机制。例如，在实践中，通过预测大小分布和生态系统生物量组成的变化，这种理解还将直接有助于改善区域范围内不同气候变化情景下的生态系统管理。

Understanding how the physiology of individuals constrain ecosystem dynamics is of fundamental importance to predicting the effects of climate change on global biogeochemical cycles. My recent research demonstrates that rates of respiration accelerate at a faster pace than growth rates following acute increases in temperature. A direct, but unexplored consequence of this phenomenon is that the cost of growth increases with temperature, leading to the prediction that warmer environments should be characterised by less efficient energy transfer through food chains with less biomass at higher trophic levels. Here I propose to investigate this novel prediction with a research programme that involves the development and integration of metabolic, food web, and evolutionary theories with a series of experimental and field tests linking individual physiology to ecosystem and food web structure. Importantly, this is the first time in which short- (physiological) and long-term adaptation responses to warming will be measured for multiple interacting species comprising different trophic levels in order to predict and test emergent patterns at the ecosystem scale. This programme thus aims at delivering a predictive framework to help forecast how the functioning and dynamics of aquatic ecosystems will play out as the climate warms. Developing such an understanding is of both fundamental and practical importance. Fundamentally, this framework holds promise to reconcile the multiple mechanisms invoked to explain the effects of warming on ecosystem functioning, by teasing out the effects directly caused by energetic constraints. In practical terms, for example, such an understanding would also directly help improve ecosystem management under different climate change scenarios at regional scales by predicting changes in size distribution and ecosystem biomass composition.