OEB Special Seminar

Date: 

Monday, January 22, 2018, 4:00pm

Location: 

Biological Labs Lecture Hall, Room 1080, 16 Divinity Avenue

Nathan LemoineNathan Lemoine
Colorado State University

"An Integrative Approach To Predicting Plant-Insect Interactions Under Future Climates"

Abstract:  Rapid climate warming will induce numerous changes in community structure and ecosystem function. Most, if not all, of these changes emerge from temperature-driven changes in individual physiology and demographics. Therefore, quantitatively integrating physiological, population, and community ecology provides an excellent framework for predicting how climate change will impact species interactions, biodiversity, and ecosystem function. In this talk, I apply this approach to predicting plant-insect interactions under rapid climate warming. Rising temperatures stimulate insect metabolic demands and reduce insect nitrogen assimilation efficiencies, leading to temperature-induced nitrogen limitation of insect herbivores. This pattern is robust across multiple taxonomic groups, and causes host plant-dependent impacts of climate change on insect performance. Incorporating such temperature-by-nutrient interactions into population models significantly alters our expectations of population stability and species coexistence under increased temperatures. Finally, I demonstrate how warming alters the role of predators in a community and stress the importance of integrating behavioral ecology into predictions of species interactions. This integrative framework provides a strong baseline from which to assess the impacts of other aspects of climate change, e.g. drought, on evolution, species interactions, population dynamics, and terrestrial ecosystem function.

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See also: OEB Seminars