Effects of climate change on cummunity structure and ecosystem functioning using tank-bromeliads as a model system

Author(s)

Pablo Augusto Poleto Antiqueira

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: Campinas, SP.
• Institution: Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Instituto de Biologia
• Defense date: 2017-01-12

Examining board members

Gustavo Quevedo Romero; Simone Aparecida Vieira; Sérgio Furtado dos Reis; Mathias Mistretta Pires; Hugo Miguel Preto de Morais Sarmento

• Advisor: Gustavo Quevedo Romero; Owen Leonard Petchey

Abstract

Ecosystems are structured by abiotic components, such as temperature and rainfall, and biotics including primary producers and predators. Global changes have strongly modified these factors, affecting ecosystems directly or indirectly, through impacts on biodiversity. These changes have been well documented and attributed to several anthropogenic drivers such as climate change and habitat degradation. Species loss due to global changes does not occur randomly, and some groups are more sensitive than others, such as top predators. We used tank bromeliads as a model system to investigate, empirically, the individual and interactive effects of warming, changes in top predator diversity, and habitat size in ecosystem functioning and diversity patterns of different biological groups. In the first chapter, we evaluated how these antropogenic-caused environmental changes (warming and habitat size reduction) combine with changes in predator diversity affect different components of ecosystem multifunctionality, mediated by the diversity and biomass of the aquatic community. In the second chapter, we explored how these environmental and trophic changes affect the diversity patterns of phylogenetically distant organisms and from different trophic levels - macrofauna, microfauna, and bacteria. Our results demonstrate that warming, predator diversity, and habitat size individually affect the ecosystem multifunctionality and diversity of different biological groups and trophic levels, differing in direction and magnitude. This study brought unprecedented discoveries of how individual and interactive components of global change drive biodiversity and ecosystem functioning (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 14/04603-4 - Global warming effects on the trophic structure and ecosystem functioning in tank-bromeliads
• Grantee: Pablo Augusto Poleto Antiqueira
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate