The need for unrealistic experiments in global change biology

Abstract

Climate change is an existential threat, and our ability to conduct experiments on how organisms will respond to it is limited by logistics and resources, making it vital that experiments be maximally useful. The majority of experiments on phytoplankton responses to warming and CO₂ use only two levels of each driver. However, to project the characters of future populations, we need a mechanistic and generalisable explanation for how phytoplankton respond to concurrent changes in temperature and CO₂. This requires experiments with more driver levels, to produce response surfaces that can aid in the development of predictive models. We recommend prioritising experiments or programmes that produce such response surfaces on multiple scales for phytoplankton.

Keywords: carbon dioxide; experimental design; multiple drivers; ocean acidification; phytoplankon; response curve; warming.