Thermal traits of freshwater macroinvertebrates vary with feeding group and phylogeny

Abstract

Abstract Functional traits of organisms, especially feeding traits, influence how organisms mediate ecosystem processes. As climate change, landscape modification and industrial waste heat release continue to increase water temperatures, shifts in the composition of feeding traits within aquatic macroinvertebrate communities may alter ecosystem processes. However, it is unclear whether thermal traits of macroinvertebrates vary systematically across functional feeding groups (FFGs; i.e., categories based on feeding ecology such as herbivores, shredders, predators, etc.) or phylogeny. We used previously published datasets on hundreds of macroinvertebrate taxa to evaluate how thermal traits differed across FFGs. We also examined the strength of phylogenetic signal in both FFG and thermal traits, using a new phylogeny of insect taxa. Then, we tested whether phylogenetic patterns offered a plausible explanation for differences in thermal traits among FFGs by comparing phylogenetic and non‐phylogenetic regressions. Shredders tended to have lower temperature preferences, optima and maxima (three of five of the thermal traits evaluated) than other FFGs. Patterns for other FFGs differed by thermal trait, but predators, collector‐gatherers and filterers had some of the highest thermal trait values. FFG explained 40% of the variation in critical thermal maximum, but <12% of the variation in the four other thermal traits. Phylogeny explained 26%–88% of the variation in thermal and feeding traits. For the subset of taxa and trait data that were available, phylogeny explained more than double the variation in thermal traits relative to FFG, but comparison of phylogenetic and non‐phylogenetic regressions highlighted that FFG explained variation in thermal traits that was independent of phylogeny. Our results highlight phylogeny and FFG as predictors of thermal traits in aquatic macroinvertebrates. Our results suggest that warmer water temperatures could favour predators, filterers and collector‐gatherers over shredders. Furthermore, our results confirm that certain orders of macroinvertebrates, such as Diptera, may be better suited to warmer temperatures than other orders, such as Plecoptera.