Effects of CO2 and temperature on tritrophic interactions

PLoS One. 2013 Apr 25;8(4):e62528. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0062528. Print 2013.

Abstract

There has been a significant increase in studies of how global change parameters affect interacting species or entire communities, yet the combined or interactive effects of increased atmospheric CO2 and associated increases in global mean temperatures on chemically mediated trophic interactions are mostly unknown. Thus, predictions of climate-induced changes on plant-insect interactions are still based primarily on studies of individual species, individual global change parameters, pairwise interactions, or parameters that summarize communities. A clear understanding of community response to global change will only emerge from studies that examine effects of multiple variables on biotic interactions. We examined the effects of increased CO2 and temperature on simple laboratory communities of interacting alfalfa, chemical defense, armyworm caterpillars, and parasitoid wasps. Higher temperatures and CO2 caused decreased plant quality, decreased caterpillar development times, developmental asynchrony between caterpillars and wasps, and complete wasp mortality. The effects measured here, along with other effects of global change on natural enemies suggest that biological control and other top-down effects of insect predators will decline over the coming decades.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
  • Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Carbon Dioxide / pharmacology*
  • Food Chain*
  • Host-Parasite Interactions / drug effects
  • Lepidoptera / drug effects
  • Lepidoptera / parasitology
  • Medicago sativa / chemistry
  • Medicago sativa / drug effects
  • Temperature*
  • Wasps / drug effects
  • Wasps / physiology

Substances

  • Carbon Dioxide

Grants and funding

This work was supported by: Earthwatch Institute (www.Earthwatch.org), University of Nevada Reno (www.unr.edu), Department of Energy (National Institute for Global Environmental Change and National Institute for Climatic Change Research, http://niccr.nau.edu/), and National Science Foundation (nsf.gov) grants - DEB1020509 and DEB0849361. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.