Abstract

Models of species response to climate change often assume that physiological traits are invariant across populations. Neglecting potential intraspecific variation may overlook the possibility that some populations are more resilient or susceptible than others, creating inaccurate predictions of climate impacts. In addition, phenotypic plasticity can contribute to trait variation and may mediate sensitivity to climate. Quantifying such forms of intraspecific variation can improve our understanding of how climate can affect ecologically important species, such as invasive predators. Here, we quantified thermal performance (tolerance, acclimation capacity, developmental traits) across seven populations of the predatory marine snail (Urosalpinx cinerea) from native Atlantic and non-native Pacific coast populations in the USA. Using common garden experiments, we assessed the effects of source population and developmental acclimation on thermal tolerance and developmental traits of F1 snails. We then estimated climate sensitivity by calculating warming tolerance (thermal tolerance - habitat temperature), using field environmental data. We report that low-latitude populations had greater thermal tolerance than their high latitude counterparts. However, these same low-latitude populations exhibited decreased thermal tolerance when exposed to environmentally realistic higher acclimation temperatures. Low-latitude native populations had the greatest climate sensitivity (habitat temperatures near thermal limits). In contrast, invasive Pacific snails had the lowest climate sensitivity, suggesting that these populations are likely to persist and drive negative impacts on native biodiversity. Developmental rate significantly increased in embryos sourced from populations with greater habitat temperature but had variable effects on clutch size and hatching success. Thus, warming can produce widely divergent responses within the same species, resulting in enhanced impacts in the non-native range and extirpation in the native range. Broadly, our results highlight how intraspecific variation can alter management decisions, as this may clarify whether management efforts should be focused on many or only a few populations.

Highlights

  • Understanding the sensitivity of species to climate change is a primary aim of global change ecology (Calosi et al, 2008; Williams et al, 2008; Bennett et al, 2019)

  • Ecological forecasts are a suite of modelling tools that can aid conservation practitioners in determining species sensitivity to climate change by correlating occupied distribution environments or known physiological limits with predictions of future climate scenarios (Pearson and Dawson, 2003; Helmuth, 2009; Chown et al, 2010; Cacciapaglia and van Woesik, 2018)

  • The management implications of assuming niche conservatism or local adaptation can be starkly divergent; when modelled as having homogenous physiology throughout its range, a Porites coral species was expected to increase its range by 5%–6% by 2100, whereas when modelled as 5 distinct populations the range was forecasted to decrease by 50% (Cacciapaglia and van Woesik, 2018)

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Summary

Introduction

Understanding the sensitivity of species to climate change is a primary aim of global change ecology (Calosi et al, 2008; Williams et al, 2008; Bennett et al, 2019). In a conservation and management context, ecological forecasts can be used to identify species at risk and prioritize efforts and management actions on species and ecosystems of concern (Payne et al, 2017; Tulloch et al, 2020) These models often use physiological measures from a single population to infer the capacity of a species to respond to environmental change (Pearman et al, 2010; D’Amen et al, 2013; Valladares et al, 2014; Lecocq et al, 2019) and implicitly assume that physiological niches are homogenous across populations within a species (Peterson, 1999, 2011; Bennett et al, 2019). Intraspecific variation in thermal performance may be crucial to understanding species sensitivity to climate change, but our understanding of mechanisms underlying such variation remains incomplete

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