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| Global climate change will remodel ecological communities worldwide. However,
as a consequence of biotic interactions, communities may respond to climate
change in idiosyncratic ways. This makes predictive models that
incorporate biotic interactions necessary. We show how such models can be
constructed based on empirical studies in combination with predictions or
assumptions regarding the abiotic consequences of climate change. Specifically,
we consider a well-studied ant community in North America. First, we use historical
data to parameterize a basic model for species coexistence. Using this
model, we determine the importance of various factors, including thermal
niches, food discovery rates, and food removal rates, to historical species coexistence.
We then extend the model to predict how the community will restructure
in response to several climate-related changes, such as increased
temperature, shifts in species phenology, and altered resource availability. Interestingly,
our mechanistic model suggests that increased temperature and shifts
in species phenology can have contrasting effects. Nevertheless, for almost all
scenarios considered, we find that the most subordinate ant species suffers most
as a result of climate change. More generally, our analysis shows that community
composition can respond to climate warming in nonintuitive ways. For
example, in the context of a community, it is not necessarily the most heatsensitive
species that are most at risk. Our results demonstrate how models that
account for niche partitioning and interspecific trade-offs among species can be
used to predict the likely idiosyncratic responses of local communities to
climate change. | |
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