Abstract
The ecological consequences of climate change will be driven by a combination of both gradual and abrupt changes in climatic conditions. Despite growing evidence that abrupt abiotic change of extreme events may profoundly alter ecological processes, it remains unclear how such events may combine with longer-term global and local disturbances. Here, we focused on a key process of herbivory and tested how its strength would change in response to forecasted global (CO2 enrichment) and local disturbances (nutrient enrichment) under abrupt (heat wave) or gradual (future temperature) changes in temperature, using an herbivorous gastropod and turf algae interaction within kelp forests as a model system. The heat wave caused the greatest magnitude of change in consumption across all treatment combinations. The positive effect of nutrient enrichment on consumption was magnified by increasing temperature, but caused surprisingly intense herbivory when combined with the heat wave. Carbon and nutrient enrichments individually increased consumption with nitrogen overriding the positive effects of CO2. These results not only reveal that the strength of ecological responses to extreme events may substantially exceed those manifested under ‘average’ future conditions, but also that the effects of extremes may be exacerbated by local disturbances. If disproportionate ecological change occurs where extreme events overlap with local disturbances, scientists and managers will need to recognize spatial and temporal heterogeneities of environmental change to think beyond averages.
Highlights
The ecological consequences of climate change will be driven by a combination of both gradual and abrupt changes in climatic conditions
The effects of the heat wave were magnified by nutrient enrichment, so that consumption increased up to 40 times relative to initial control rates (Fig. 1)
Whilst nutrient enrichment did not alter consumption rates at control temperature, nutrients significantly increased consumption rates at future temperature and this effect was exacerbated by the heat wave (Table 1, Additional file 1)
Summary
The ecological consequences of climate change will be driven by a combination of both gradual and abrupt changes in climatic conditions. Despite growing evidence that abrupt abiotic change of extreme events may profoundly alter ecological processes, it remains unclear how such events may combine with longer-term global and local disturbances. Pulse disturbances that cause abrupt changes to the abiotic environment relative to the life cycle of most organisms or ecological processes [2]. Since extreme events are becoming increasingly common and intense [15, 16] and their ecological effects on communities can Ghedini et al Climate Change Responses (2015) 2:6 be significant [9, 12], we need to move beyond trendbased studies to include studies of ‘events’
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